Sanctuary of Our Lady of Sameiro

Overview

The Sanctuary of Sameiro is the Marian shrine on the hilltop 350 m above Braga, a neoclassical domed church begun in 1863 whose complex is the largest place of devotion to the Virgin in Portugal after Fátima, with pilgrimages on the first Sunday of June and the third of August. It is under 2 km above Bom Jesus and 4 km from the city, and the view from the top of its dome over Braga and the Minho valley is the best in the district.

It is not an old or a beautiful building, and its own history admits the church is of little artistic note beyond its silver tabernacle and its statue; it is worth the trip for the setting, the grand flight of steps, the 20th-century art added inside, and the sense of a working shrine.

History

The sanctuary was the work of Father Martinho Silva, a Braga priest who led a local Marian revival in the 1850s, in the aftermath of the Liberal Wars that had closed Portugal’s religious houses and in the excitement that followed Pius IX’s proclamation of the Immaculate Conception in December 1854; Braga was the first diocese in the country to celebrate the dogma, in January 1855.

The church began on 14 July 1863 and an outdoor shrine with a marble Virgin by the Porto sculptor Amatucci was dedicated in 1869; that statue was wrecked in 1883 and replaced in 1886 by one by Teixeira Lopes. The complex grew over decades to include the crypt, the Chapel of the Eucharist, the rector’s house and the great stairway with monuments to the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Conception at its top. Pius IX granted the statue a canonical coronation in 1876, it was crowned in 1904, John Paul II visited on 15 May 1982 and gave the shrine the Golden Rose in 2004.

Visiting

The road from Bom Jesus climbs to Sameiro, and the approach is the stairway: a monumental flight up the hillside with the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Conception at the top and, near the entrance to the grounds, four statues of theologians who wrote on the Virgin, Cyril of Alexandria, Alphonsus Liguori, Bernard of Clairvaux and Anthony of Padua.

Inside the neoclassical church are the silver tabernacle on the main altar and the marble Virgin carved in Rome by Eugenio Maccagnani, arrived in 1880; in the crypt, tile panels by Querubim Lapa; in the presbytery, a large painting by Óscar Casares of 2005 to 2006; and around the church Clara Menéres’s four great sculptures of the archangels Michael, Raphael and Gabriel and the Angel of Portugal. Climb to the top of the dome for the view over Braga to the Minho; the large garden has a children’s playground and there is a museum.

Tips

• Come for the view and the dome; the church interior is ten minutes.
• The pilgrimage Sundays in June and August bring tens of thousands and close the road to ordinary traffic; either come for the spectacle or avoid those days.
• Walk down to Bom Jesus, under 2 km, rather than up.
• Braga’s TUB buses reach Sameiro in fare zone two; a taxi from Bom Jesus is a few minutes.

Nearby

• Bom Jesus do Monte: under 2 km downhill.
• Braga centre: 4 km.
• Espinho village: adjacent.