Guimarães: squares and convents of the old centre: a self-guided walk

By Alleytale

From a 1902 townhouse and the last tower of the medieval wall to the convent that became the town hall

You walk back into the medieval town: the one tower left of the wall, a museum built onto the ruins of a Gothic convent, a Misericórdia church, a shoemakers' hostel founded in 1315, a tower house, a Franciscan convent, a museum of sacred art and a Gothic monument on the Largo da Oliveira.

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The stops

1. 1Casa Correia de Matos

   The architect José Marques da Silva designed this house for the Correia de Matos family and began it in 1902, his first project in Guimarães. He later designed the Martins Sarmento Society Building, the city market and the Penha Sanctuary. The house mixes Neoclassical, Beaux-Arts and Italianate styles, and its parapet carries the initials CM. It stands on Afonso Henriques Avenue, laid out in the 1890s to link the town with the railway station that opened in 1884.

   

2. 2Alfândega Tower

   This is the only tower left of Guimarães's medieval wall, which was built in the 13th and 14th centuries and then largely demolished between the 18th and 19th centuries. Read the words on its stone: Aqui Nasceu Portugal, Portugal was born here. Its rehabilitation was inaugurated on 3 August 2024, and the tower can now be visited.

   

3. 3Sociedade Martins Sarmento

   The Martins Sarmento Society was created in 1881 in honour of the archaeologist Martins Sarmento, and its museum and headquarters are here. In 1887 the city council approved handing it the remains of the 14th-century Gothic Convent of São Domingos for a museum and library. The granite façade, finished in 1905, carries frescos by Abel Cardoso and the carved words Sciencias, Lettras, Artes and Indvstrias.

   

4. 4Igreja da Misericórdia de Guimarães

   The Misericórdia brotherhood is first mentioned in 1511, when it met in a chapel in the cloisters of the Oliveira collegiate church, and in 1588 it laid the first stone of its own church. The stone front is laid out like an altarpiece in two storeys, with medallion busts of the Lopes school over the door, and the heritage inventory calls it one of the best Mannerist altarpiece-style façades. Beside it, a stairway on three arches is dated 1640, with a wall fountain beneath.

   

5. 5Albergaria de São Crispim

   In 1315 João and Pero Baião founded the brotherhood of the master shoemakers, leaving it their rents and lands, and the hostel beside the chapel of Saint Crispin sheltered the poor. A tile panel over the door still reads Albergue de S. Crispim, ceia de Natal, antiga albergaria-hospital, 1315. A legacy of 1869 paid for a Christmas supper for twelve poor people of bread, boiled cod with potatoes and cabbage, a little vinho verde and rice pudding.

   

6. 6Torre dos Almadas

   This Gothic tower house was completed before 1279 as part of a larger noble residence. Between the 13th and 15th centuries most of that residence and the neighbouring buildings were pulled down, and once the surroundings were cleared, windows and an entrance gate were opened in the tower. Since 1968 it has been the headquarters of the association of former students of the Guimarães high school, and the committee for the yearly Nicolinas festivities is formally set up here.

   

7. 7Convento de São Francisco

   The Franciscans reached Guimarães in 1217, and King John I ordered the convent rebuilt around 1400 on the site where it still stands. The Gothic apse was finished around 1461. Inside, the transept walls are covered in blue-and-white tiles from the first half of the 18th century, and the wooden ceiling of the nave carries trompe-l'oeil paintings.

   

8. 8Museu de Alberto Sampaio

   This museum of sacred art occupies the buildings beside the Church of Nossa Senhora da Oliveira, the former collegiate church of Guimarães. It was created in 1928 and opened to the public in 1931, and its cloister and chapter hall date from the 13th century. It holds more than 2,000 inventoried objects, among them goldsmith work, paintings, sculpture and textiles.

   

9. 9Cruzeiro de Nossa Senhora da Guia

   This Manueline stone cross carries a carved group on its capital showing the lamentation over the dead Christ, with a Pietà at the centre. At the Virgin's feet a small praying figure kneels beside an upturned scallop shell, a sign that may link to the pilgrim roads to Santiago de Compostela, and the inventory suggests the figure could be the donor, Afonso Vieira. It has been a National Monument since 1910 and was set in its present spot in the 1930s.

   

10. 10Padrão do Salado

    King Afonso IV took part in the 1340 Battle of Río Salado to support his son-in-law Afonso XI of Castile, and this Gothic monument was erected on his initiative to mark the Portuguese victory. Under an open granite porch with four carved arches stands a polychrome cross. The central limestone cross was originally gold-plated and was given by the merchant Pedro Esteves in 1342.

    

11. 11Praça de Santiago

    Tradition says the apostle St. James brought an image of the Virgin Mary to Guimarães and placed it in a pagan temple on this square, which is how it came to be called St. Tiago Square. It still keeps many of its medieval features. A small 17th-century porched chapel to St. James stood here until the end of the 19th century, and Portuguese pavement now marks its site.

    

12. 12Casa das Rótulas

    The house takes its name from the rótulas, the wooden lattice shutters of its upper-floor balcony, a variation of the Italian gelosia. The balcony is described as appearing nowhere else in the city. The house dates from around the early 1600s, when Guimarães had grown beyond its medieval walls and a new quarter formed around the Misericórdia church.

    

13. 13Convento de Santa Clara

    A canon of the Oliveira collegiate church, Baltasar de Andrade, founded this convent in the 16th century. It has a Baroque façade with a statue of Saint Clare at the centre and a two-storey classical cloister. The Câmara Municipal is now housed here, and some of the gilded woodwork of its chapel, emptied in the 19th century, is in the Museu de Alberto Sampaio.

    

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