Portugal and Portuguese

This is an example of what you can find in Portugal. From here you can explore more about out country and get ideas of what you want to see while your stay.

Parque Nacional Peneda Gerês- National park Peneda Gerês - the biggest natural reservation in Portugal, with Mediterranean climate as well as atlantic and a very diversified vegetation. You can find granite as a rock predominance. Viana do Castelo - It was a safe harbor while the Portuguese discoveries. Lima river crosses these lands which have manor houses from the glorious times before Brazil's independence from Portugal. It's known by its Praça da República with a renaissance fountain and its 16th century buildings, some in gothic style. Basílica de Santa Luzia is a good place for you to visit if you want a birds eye view over the city and the river, as well as a yellow funicular to get you down. In Barcelos you can find one of the most known legends of Portugal. A pilgrim who was on its way to Santiago de Compostela got acused and sentenced to death for a crime he didn't commit. To prove its innocence a Barcelos rooster (Galo de Barcelos) got up from its plate and started singing, as a miracle, as the man also survived that day. You can find it represented in ceramics and local embroidery today internationally recognized. Braga, before known as Bracara Augusta by the Romans, it was a capital for suevos and visigoths. They are still so proud of it that its main atraction it's the Semana Santa and its cathedral. From the building of romanesque origin there's only few left, still you can also find gothic and baroque style. In one of the chapels are the remains of the archbishop D. Lourenço Vicente, one of the heroes of Aljubarrota battle. Bom Jesus do Monte it's a magnificent religious site that you should visit but be careful, this is only for the strongest ones . At Bragança there are double walls of a military fortress which still protect the beautiful white houses. Domus Municipalis is the only Romanesque style building of the civil architecture found in the Iberian Peninsula. Guimarães, the birth place of D. Afonso Henriques, the 1st king of Portugal, at Castelo de Vimaranes. Since it was very important for the Portuguese history, you can also find a very imponent Paço dos Duques de Bragança, and a Igreja da Nossa Senhora da Oliveira followed by a beautiful Padrão do Salado to remember the conquest to the Moors by Afonso IV and also an interesting Igreja da Nossa Senhora da Consolação e Santos Passos. Porto, the economic capital of Portugal with a historical importance recognized by UNESCO (1997). Portucale -> Porto = Portos + Cale. Many of the vessels from the Portuguese maritime adventures, were built here, at estaleiros navais. D. Enrique, the navigator before the Ceuta conquest, ordered all the cattle of the region to be fed to him and all of his men leaving only the tripas, as you know Tripas à Moda do Porto, a very Portuguese dish which named people from Porto as tripeiros. On the 18th century established here wine merchants with the treaty of Methuen (1703) which gave the english the power of total control of the production of the wines, the 1st wine was exported to Great Britain in 1678. The romanesque cathedral of Porto with its fortress-like facade also has other architectural styles upon several changes along the years. The church of S. Francisco one of the most visited monuments of Porto had 200 km of powdered gold ordered for its construction. It's side by side to the neoclassicist Palácio da Bolsa where you can find the Salão Árabe, a very golden room with arab motifs that can dazzle any human being. Estação de S. Bento, it's the perfect train station to photoshoot some blue glazed tiles, not before visiting the Torre dos Clérigos though. This is the place to visit for a panoramic birds eye view, a tower with a Rococo facade build by Nasoni, a very well known architect in the history of Portugal. You don't leave Porto without watching these several bridges over the Douro river. One of them it's called D. Maria Pia also for train crossing, and it was build by the very well internationally known Gustavo Eiffel. The most visited and promoted one is the D. Luís I bridge, actually build by Eiffel's disciple, Théophile Seyrig. Bellow you see the barcos rabelos, the little boats which carried the wine in the roman times, today for touristic purposes. Palácio dos Carrancas was the palace where the english general Wellington stayed a few years before defeating Napoleon.


Portuguese words in green.
Example - D. Afonso Henriques in Portuguese you read Dom Afonso Henriques but in english it's only Afonso Henriques.
Also read about: Citânia de Briteiros

Consulta:
-Todo o Portugal, Escudo de Oro, 2011