Guimarães
This former monastery overlooking the city from the slopes of Penha is a magnificent, sprawling structure. The gardens are stunning and you’ll want to wander around the cloister, past dribbling fountains and masterful azulejos (hand-painted tiles). The rooms inside the former monks’ cells feel cramped, so book a room in the modern wing.
Buses to the pousada run via Costa.
27.33 MILES
Igreja de São Francisco looks from the outside to be an austerely Gothic church, but inside it hides one of Portugal’s most dazzling displays of baroque…
27.96 MILES
This fabulous cultural institution combines a museum, a mansion and extensive gardens. Cutting-edge exhibitions, along with a fine permanent collection…
27.08 MILES
From Praça da Ribeira rises a tangle of medieval alleys and stairways that eventually reach the hulking, hilltop fortress of the cathedral. Founded in the…
Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis
27.17 MILES
Porto's best art museum presents a stellar collection ranging from Neolithic carvings to Portugal’s take on modernism, all housed in the formidable…
27.31 MILES
This splendid neoclassical monument (built from 1842 to 1910) honours Porto’s past and present money merchants. Just past the entrance is the glass-domed…
27.29 MILES
Sitting atop a bluff, this gorgeous botanical garden is one of Porto's best-loved escapes, with lawns interwoven with sun-dappled paths and dotted with…
26.94 MILES
At once minimalist, iconic and daringly imaginative, the Casa da Música is the beating heart of Porto's cultural scene and the home of the Porto National…
26.91 MILES
One of the world's most beautiful train stations, beaux arts São Bento wings you back to a more graceful age of rail travel. Completed in 1903, it seems…
0.7 MILES
This slender 18th-century construction, with its 19th-century twin spires and blooming run-up from central Guimarães, has the most striking appeal of all…
2. Paço dos Duques de Bragança
0.79 MILES
Looming over the medieval city on Guimarães’ hilltop, with its crenellated towers and cylindrical brick chimneys, Paço dos Duques was first built in 1401…
0.79 MILES
Built in the 11th century and still in fine form, the seven-towered castle is thought to be the birthplace of the great man himself, Afonso Henriques…
0.82 MILES
Built around the serene Romanesque cloister of Igreja de Nossa Senhora da Oliveira, this museum has an excellent collection of ecclesiastical art and…
0.83 MILES
This 13th-century church has a brilliantly gilded and ornamented baroque interior, along with a lovely Renaissance cloister and 18th-century azulejos …
6. Igreja de Nossa Senhora da Oliveira
0.84 MILES
Founded by Countess Mumadona in the 12th century and rebuilt four centuries later, the beautiful Largo da Oliveira is dominated by this convent church.
0.85 MILES
Guimarães’ 14th-century former town hall sits above an arcaded portico providing a most graceful communication between cosy Largo da Oliveira and the more…
1.02 MILES
Some 7km southeast up a twisting, cobbled road – or a short ride on an ageing cable car – is the wooded summit of Penha (617m) overlooking Guimarães, the…