Guimarães Castle

Guimarães Castle

Where a country was born

Of all the castles in Portugal, none is loved quite like Guimarães. Carved over the gateway of the old town are the proud words Aqui nasceu Portugal — "Portugal was born here." For the Portuguese, this grey hilltop fortress in the green north of the country is not just an old building; it is the cradle of their nation. It stands above the town of Guimarães, not far from the city of Braga.

A fortress on the frontier

A castle was first raised on this spot in the 10th century by a noblewoman named Countess Mumadona Dias, to protect a monastery and the people who lived around it from raiders. Over the next two hundred years the wooden defences grew into a strong stone castle, with a tall square keep in the centre and a ring of walls studded with battlements that look like rows of pointed teeth against the sky.

In those days this was a dangerous frontier. To the south lay lands ruled by Muslim kings; to the east lay the rival Christian kingdoms of León and Castile. A castle here had to be strong.

The first king of Portugal

The most famous story of Guimarães belongs to Afonso Henriques, who would become the first king of Portugal. By tradition he was born beneath these walls around the year 1109, the son of Count Henry and Countess Teresa.

When he grew up, Afonso did not want his lands to be ruled by the kingdom of León. According to legend, he gathered his knights at Guimarães and, in 1128, defeated his own mother's forces at the nearby Battle of São Mamede — fighting to make his county an independent country. Step by step over the following years he turned that county into the Kingdom of Portugal, with himself as its first king. That is why Guimarães is remembered as the place where the nation began.

Saved from the wrecking ball

As the centuries passed and the wars moved away, the castle was no longer needed. By the 1800s it had fallen into a sad ruin, and some people even wanted to pull it down and use its stones for new buildings — at one point part of it was almost turned into a rubbish tip.

Luckily, the Portuguese came to see the castle as a national treasure too precious to lose. In the 20th century it was carefully repaired and protected, and today it is one of the most visited monuments in the whole country. Close by stands the elegant Palace of the Dukes of Bragança, a grand brick mansion with tall chimneys that makes a striking neighbour to the medieval fortress.

Visiting today

Visitors can climb the worn steps of the keep and walk the narrow wall-walks, looking out over the red rooftops of one of Portugal's prettiest old towns, whose historic centre is protected by UNESCO. Beside the castle stands a tiny Romanesque church, the chapel of São Miguel, where — so the story goes — the baby Afonso Henriques was baptised. Standing among these ancient stones, it is easy to feel why every Portuguese schoolchild knows the name Guimarães: the small castle on the hill where a great country began.