Valença: through the fortress town: a self-guided walk

By Alleytale

From the southern Coroada to the north gate of the fortress

Valença's fortress is a medieval walled town wrapped in a 17th-century system of bastions, with the Coroada added to the south, and each stop on the way north shows a different layer of it.

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The stops

1. 1Coreto do Jardim Público

   Start in the public garden below the walls, where an octagonal bandstand with a granite base and cast-iron columns stands at the centre. The garden was laid out from 1873 on the site of the old cattle fair, and the town clerk José Sousa Araújo drew it up and directed the work. When the council voted in 1897 to move the bandstand, the townspeople protested.

   

2. 2Porta da Coroada

   The Coroada is the southern half of Valença's fortress: two almost touching polygons of walls, one wrapped around the old walled town to the north and this one, with three bastions and a moat, to the south. The fortress was built from the second half of the 17th century, and dates carved on the gates of the Coroada and the Porta do Meio show the work was well advanced by 1700. A plan drawn in 1713 shows it nearly complete.

   

3. 3Capela do Bom Jesus

   This baroque military chapel stands at the heart of the Coroada. Work began in 1701 to a design by the military engineer Manuel Pinto de Vilalobos, on the king's orders, as compensation for another chapel that had been demolished when the town walls were last rebuilt. Look at the main façade, which mixes Ionic, Doric and Tuscan elements.

   

4. 4Porta do Sol

   Most of the fortress gates are topped by a pediment with a coat of arms, but the Porta do Sol is very simple, with no decoration at all. In April 1809 French troops leaving Valença mined it and the wall beside it, and engineers rebuilt it in the years that followed.

   

5. 5Igreja de Santo Estêvão

   A medieval church rebuilt in the neoclassical style after the 1755 earthquake brought down its front and part of its bell tower. Outside, a stone dated 1283 is reused in the wall of the chancel, and inside are a 15th-century Gothic-Mudéjar bishop's chair and painted panels with scenes from the life of Saint Stephen. Close by stands the town's pillory, which began as a Roman milestone from the years 43 and 44, marked XLII for 42 Roman miles from Braga.

   

6. 6Igreja de Santa Maria dos Anjos

   Founded around 1276, this is Valença's parish church, and it stands inside the walls next to the Gaviarra gate. Its main doorway shows Romanesque features, and later centuries added Baroque, Neoclassical and revival touches. Look along the side walls for carved stone corbels under the roofline, shaped like animals and human figures.

   

7. 7Porta da Gaviarra

   On the north side, the Porta da Gaviarra stands out among the fortress gates because its passage includes part of the medieval gate, with a pointed arch and carved leaf capitals, and a medieval cistern. The cistern is semicircular and probably dates from the 13th century; it was buried when the modern fortress went up in the 17th century. In 1509 the drawings of Duarte de Armas already show this gate in the town wall, along with the Sol gate and a western one.

   

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