Guimarães Historical Center
According to legend, in this land, the first king of Portugal, D. Afonso Henriques, was born in 1109, when Guimarães was a small medieval urban settlement protected by a stone and wood castle.
The intramural urban agglomeration became bipolar throughout the Middle Ages, to stabilize and homogenize in the 18th century. And there is no better way to appreciate an ancient city than to understand it as a "scenery" sedimented in time. In fact, more than monumentality, in Guimarães we can speak of an "atmosphere" created by the dark roughness of the granite, which contrasts with the bright colors of the plasterwork.
This environment is marked by emblematic monuments of the history of Portugal, to the point that Guimarães has become one of the largest national "places of memory", among them, the Castle (12th-13th centuries) and the Paço dos Duques of Bragança (15th century).
