Guimarães

Overview

Portugal was born here, the town says, and the claim is fair. Guimarães is where the first king, Afonso Henriques, was born, where the battle of São Mamede that made his county a kingdom was fought on 24 June 1128, and where the castle that defended the 10th-century monastery still stands on its rock above a medieval town that UNESCO listed in 2001 as the best-preserved example of its kind in Europe.

It was European Capital of Culture in 2012, is European Green Capital in 2026, and Condé Nast Traveler called it the most beautiful small city in Europe in 2022, which the town takes as its due. It is also the centre of the Ave valley’s textile industry, a university town with a Minho campus, and a place of 156,000 people in the municipality where the old core is a walkable 16 hectares of granite squares and wooden balconies. An hour from Porto by train, half an hour from Braga by bus, it is the easiest day trip in the north and a good overnight.

Neighbourhoods

The historic centre

The listed core below the castle hill is granite lanes, timber-balconied houses and small squares, all pedestrian, with the hotels, restaurants and cafés a visitor needs; stay inside it if you can. The modern main square at its southern edge is where the buses stop and the shopping streets begin.

Around the station and the campus

The railway station is a 10 to 15-minute walk south of the centre, and the streets between it and the Toural are the everyday town of shops and cafés; the University of Minho’s Guimarães campus gives the town its students and its cheap lunches. The Capital of Culture year of 2012 left the town new cultural venues, which is where its contemporary art and design now happen.

See & do

The castle and the palace

The castle was built in the 10th century by the countess Mumadona Dias to protect her monastery from Moors and Norsemen, and rebuilt in the 13th as the shield-shaped fortress with eight towers and a keep that stands today; Afonso Henriques is said to have been born inside, and it was voted one of the Seven Wonders of Portugal. Between it and the town is the Paço dos Duques, the palace begun in 1420 for Afonso, first Duke of Braganza, abandoned when the family moved to Vila Viçosa, quarried by the townspeople in the 19th century and rebuilt under the Estado Novo with more grandeur than it may ever have had; it is a museum of arms and furniture, and an official residence of the presidency.

The old town

The Largo da Oliveira is the heart: an arcaded square around the Igreja da Oliveira and the Gothic Padrão do Salado shrine, ringed by cafés and the best place in town to sit. The Museu de Alberto Sampaio, opened in 1931 in the old collegiate buildings of the Oliveira church, holds the town’s medieval treasury; the neighbouring square is the second ring of restaurant terraces, and the whole listed centre can be walked in an hour and repays a second, slower one.

Penha

Penha is the mountain above the town, 613 m and the highest point of the municipality, reached by a cable car from the edge of the centre or a 30-minute walk up, with a sanctuary, boulders, picnic woods and the view over the Ave valley to the sea on a clear day.

Vitória SC, the town’s top-division club, play at the 30,000-seat Estádio D. Afonso Henriques just north of the centre.

Food & drink

The food is the Minho’s: roast kid, rojões of fried pork, papas de sarrabulho, duck rice and bacalhau, with maize bread and vinho verde, in portions meant for two. The local sweets come from the convent the town was founded on: the tortas de Guimarães, half-moon flaky pastries that are not tarts at all, and the toucinho do céu, the egg-and-almond “bacon from heaven”, sold in the pastelarias around the Oliveira. Restaurants cluster on the Largo da Oliveira and the square beside it, where the terraces are the draw, and on the streets just outside the listed centre, where the prices are lower; the town has a Michelin-starred restaurant in the historic centre with tasting menus from around €55, and a modern kitchen on the Avenida São Gonçalo with a menu that changes by season.

Nightlife

Guimarães is a small town with a university, which means the Largo da Oliveira and the square beside it are full of café tables until late, the bars on the streets between them fill on Thursday to Saturday, and the clubs, such as they are, are a student affair. The one night the whole town is out is the Gualterianas, the city festival on the first weekend of August, with music, fireworks and a drumming procession around the old streets, held since 1906; the Nicolinas, the students’ festival from 29 November to 7 December in honour of St Nicholas, is the other, with the Pinheiro night when a pine tree is hauled through the streets to drums after the students’ supper.

When to go

April to June. Green, mild and quiet; the castle and palace without queues, the Penha woods at their best, and Porto’s day-trippers only at weekends.

July to August. Warm and dry, and the town’s own season: the Gualterianas on the first weekend of August fill every room, and the squares run late every night.

September to October. The students return and the weather holds; the best light on the granite.

November to March. Wet and cool, with the Nicolinas from 29 November to 7 December as the one date; hotels are cheap and the town is its own.

Getting there

By train. The cheapest and best way: an hourly suburban train from Porto’s São Bento or Campanhã in about 1 h 15 for around €5, through the Minho’s villages, and a few Intercidades from Lisbon that take four hours or more; Guimarães alternates with Braga as the northern terminus of the long-distance lines. The station is a short walk south of the old town.

From Porto airport. Getbus runs direct coaches from the terminal in about 50 minutes for €7.50 one way, €12 return; the metro to Campanhã and a train takes longer; a taxi is about €60.

By road and coach. The A7 leaves the A3 north of Porto and arrives in under an hour; Rede Expressos coaches come from the whole country, and the buses from Braga take 20 to 40 minutes, faster than any train.

Getting around

Walk. The listed centre is pedestrianised and small, and a multi-trip bus ticket is not worth buying; a city bus ride is about €1.25 if you need one to the station or the campus, and a sightseeing bus loops the centre in summer. The Penha cable car leaves from the eastern edge of town; the walk up takes half an hour on a safe road. A hire car makes sense only for Briteiros and the Minho villages, and parking is easy outside the centre.

Where to stay

The old town has small hotels and guesthouses in restored houses; a chain hotel by the station and a hostel on the Rua da Liberdade cover the budget end at around €31 to €35, and the Casa de Sezim takes guests in its painted rooms outside town. Book for the Gualterianas weekend and for the summer; the rest of the year rooms are easy and cheap.

Practical info

Guimarães is as safe as a small town gets; the practical advice is about timing, since the castle and palace keep museum hours and the cable car runs shorter hours out of season, and about the summer, when the Gualterianas weekend fills the town. Souvenirs are the Minho’s: the embroidered lovers’ handkerchief, linen and the local pottery. For money, plugs and pharmacies see the Portugal guide.

Places to visit

Castle

• Castle of Guimarães — The castle where the first king is said to have been born

Palace

• Palace of the Dukes of Braganza — Fifteenth-century ducal palace with Burgundian chimneys