The Medieval Towns of Portugal  

After spending three days in the southern Algrave region of Portugal we began driving north. When we picked up our rental car in Lisbon, we decided see as much as Portugal as possible. Because of Portugal’s small size, it was easy to see a great deal of the country by car in the 10 days we would be there.

The regions east and southeast of Lisbon are the agrarian heartland of Portugal. We mostly drove on smaller highways and avoided the autobahn so we could take the time to see the fertile fields, grasslands, horse and bull breeding areas and lovely rolling green covered hills. We passed forests of cork and oak trees, fig and pine trees, many vineyards and saw large modern windmills on the tops of the highest hills. For our tour of the small medieval towns in this area, we choose Evora, Obidos and the old town of Sintra, all characterized by a fortress and castle and narrow cobblestone streets where pedestrians have to duck into doorways to allow cars to inch by! In these towns we saw evidence of 14^th century fortifications with large wooden gates, Roman aqueducts, thick fortress walls, moats and sloping stone banks around them. The fortress walls protected the hilly streets which were tightly packed with mostly white washed cottages with terracotta tile roofs. It appeared that the towns adhered to an architectural code because most of the buildings in each of the towns seemed to be painted very similar colors of trim. The building of Evora stood out with their outside trim painted a bright mustard color. Many of the house doors are just 5 foot tall and in the tiny windows hung flowering geraniums. These three towns were all so charming and medieval in appearance.

The town of Evora is a beautifully preserved walled town with very narrow streets and we had to tuck the side view mirrors of the car in to get through some of the streets. We toured the all of the main points of the town by foot and really enjoyed the old world charm of this town. The town is also unique in that it has ruins from the Roman occupation. We have seen many, many churches during our travels but we encountered the most unusual Chapel in Evora. This Chapel is connected to a church that is called “The Chapel of the Bones”. The walls and columns of this chapel were made with the skulls and bones from more than 5,000 people. It was built to remind us, we were told, of our mortality. Legend has it that the bones came from either soldiers who died in a big battle or from plague victims. The church was built during the 1500-1600’s and is now used as a chapel for worship and meditation. This Chapel definitely caught us off guard and left us with a very weird feeling as we left it.

The next day we continued our drive through the countryside to Obidos which was a much smaller walled town and we were able to tour the town quickly. Again, the town had roads the size of sidewalks made of cobblestone and there were restrictions on what cars were even allowed in the town. What took some time was a walk around the top of the fortress wall that surrounds the village (we estimate approximately 1 to 1.5 miles with many steps). We enjoyed seeing the town and the countryside below from the walls plus getting in our hike in the day.

The next medieval town on our list was Sintra which is one of the oldest towns in the country, dating back to the mid 1100’s. This town is located only about an hour’s drive north from Lisbon but it seemed like thousands of kilometers. Since the 1800’s the town has become a very popular area for aristocrats and the wealthy. It’s very lush with vegetation and we enjoyed the old town atmosphere Even the Pension we stayed in had beautiful gardens and a wonderful 1800’s look and feel to it.

There were several palaces in town to tour. The Royal Palace of Sintra was inhabited by Queen Maria Pia until 1910. She was the grandmother of Manuel II, the last King of Portugal. It’s located in the center of the old town just down the street from our Pension. However we felt the most magnificent of the palaces in the town was the Palacio Nacional de Pena. It’s perched high above Sintra with a huge lush garden around the palace. Since the palace was built in different stages, it has the architectural designs and colors of the different periods in which it was built. This palace was last occupied by Queen Amelia until 1910. We thoroughly enjoyed getting a taste of medieval life and transporting ourselves back in time. However, it’s now time to get moving and drive into Lisbon. We expect this city to have its own very old world feel and we are looking forward to our visit.

Where’s Pat and Mike??