Cirrus' Portugal Summer
Preface: The doomed Lisbon tram
Stop 1: Lisbon
Stop 2: Óbidos
Stop 3: Coimbra
Stop 4: Porto
Stop 5: The non-glamorous central province
ÓBIDOS is an ancient hilltop fortified town that both commands a broad view of the surrounding countryside and has great access to fresh water, trade routes, and farmland. Prehistoric peoples lived there far back into ancient history. The Celts had a settlement there, followed by the Phoenicians, Romans, Goths, Moors, and eventually Portuguese.
The town was one of the more important in Portugal during the medieval era, but today it remains a small village of only a few thousand people. Thus it's the kind of tourist "old town" that North Americans are quite familiar with from places like Santa Fe, Annapolis, or Key West, except older and in the European style.
The town is ringed by a complete wall, and has a castle at its highest point. You drive up to the base of the walls, park a block or two outside them, enter an old stone gate to pass through the walls and into the village, and then follow the main streets through the town up to the castle.
You enter the town gate into this charming vestibule.
Then you're inside.
Yes, you can climb the walls.
From atop the battlements you get a glorious view of the town, castle, and surrounding countryside.
Off the walls back in the village.
Praça de Santa Maria is a little square about halfway between the gate and castle.
Lovely map of the town on the wall of a shop.
You reach the tippy top of the hill and first there's a church, which has been converted into a bookstore.
Then there's the castle. We didn't make it inside.
Instead, we followed this little gate outside the battlements into a hilltop garden.
There are a few places you can pass through the wall and go down into the lower town.
Annnd that's about it! Thanks for looking!
