The Seven Wonders of Portugal: A Monument Route from Belém to the Douro

On 7 July 2007, at a ceremony in the Estádio da Luz in Lisbon, Portugal announced the winners of a national vote that had run for over a year. More than half a million people had called or clicked their preference among 21 shortlisted monuments, and the result became known as the Sete Maravilhas de Portugal, the Seven Wonders of Portugal. It was inspired by the global New7Wonders campaign, but the Portuguese version turned out to be unusually useful for travellers: the seven winners make a coherent route through the whole country, north to south, covering nine centuries of building.

Torre de Belém, Lisbon

The tower on the Tagus is the monument most people picture when they think of Portuguese stone. Built between 1514 and 1519 under King Manuel I, it guarded the entrance to Lisbon's harbour and watched the caravels leave for Africa, Brazil and India. The architect, Francisco de Arruda, had worked in Morocco, and you can see it: the watchtowers are crowned with small domes that echo North African mosques, while the loggias are pure Portuguese Manueline, carved with rope, coral and the armillary sphere of the king.

The tower looks best from the water, or from the riverside path early in the morning before the queues form. Cross over afterwards to the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, its twin wonder, and finish with a warm custard tart from the pastry shop that has baked them since 1837. Our guide to chasing the perfect pastel de nata in Lisbon has the details. The tower has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1983, together with the monastery.

Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, Lisbon

If the tower was Lisbon's shield, the monastery was its thank you note. Financed by a five percent tax on the spices and gold of the trade routes, the Jerónimos took a century to complete and produced what many consider the high point of Manueline architecture. The south portal is a small mountain of carved figures, and inside the church the six slender columns rise into a single stone vault that seems too delicate to hold.

The cloister is where most visitors go quiet. Two storeys of arcades, each arch different, with marine motifs worked into every corner. Vasco da Gama and the poet Luís de Camões are buried in the church, which tells you something about what this building means to the country. Our article on Vasco da Gama and the sea route to India picks up the story from here.

Palácio da Pena, Sintra

On a clear day you can see the Pena Palace from Lisbon, a splash of red and yellow on top of the Sintra hills. King Ferdinand II built it in the 1840s on the ruins of a Hieronymite monastery, and he built it the way a romantic of his century imagined the past: medieval crenellations, Moorish domes, a cloister covered in tiles, all assembled with genuine affection and almost no restraint. It was one of the first romantic palaces in Europe, decades before Neuschwanstein.

The palace sits inside a two hundred hectare park of imported sequoias, fern valleys and hidden viewpoints, and the whole ensemble is part of the Cultural Landscape of Sintra, a UNESCO site since 1995. Go on the first bus of the morning if you can. We cover the mist and the practicalities in Sintra's misty palaces.

Mosteiro da Batalha

The Monastery of Santa Maria da Vitória was built to honour a promise. After the battle of Aljubarrota in 1385, where a Portuguese army roughly a third of the size of the Castilian one secured the country's independence, King João I ordered a monastery on the edge of the battlefield. It took two centuries to build, and the result is the masterpiece of Portuguese Gothic, with a Unesco listing since 1983.

The Founder's Chapel holds the tomb of João I and his English queen, Philippa of Lancaster, hand in hand. Around them are the princes of the Avis dynasty, including Henry the Navigator. The Royal Cloister has some of the finest tracery in Europe, and the Unfinished Chapels, left open to the sky when the money ran out, are somehow more moving for it.

Mosteiro de Alcobaça

Twenty minutes south of Batalha, Alcobaça is the opposite temperament: Cistercian, austere, enormous. Founded in 1153 by the first king of Portugal, Afonso Henriques, the church is the largest in the country and almost bare, which is the point. The Cistercian order distrusted decoration, and the purity of the nave still does its work eight centuries later.

What draws most people, though, is a love story with a terrible ending. The tombs of Pedro and Inês de Castro face each other across the transept, carved like small stone cities. Pedro, heir to the throne, secretly married the murdered Inês and, according to tradition, had her exhumed and crowned so the court would kiss her hand. The detail of the carving, from hunting scenes to the wheel of fortune, rewards an unhurried hour. The monastery has been a UNESCO site since 1989.

Castelo de Óbidos

The castle of Óbidos crowns a walled hill town that Portuguese kings gave to their queens for centuries, from 1210 onwards. The walls make a complete circuit of the village and you can walk them end to end, with whitewashed houses and bougainvillea on one side and the old lagoon plain on the other. It is the only one of the seven wonders not on the UNESCO list, and in some ways the most fun to visit.

The castle itself is now a pousada, so the way to experience it is to sleep inside it, or at least walk the battlements at closing time when the day visitors leave. The town below is famous for ginja, the sour cherry liqueur served in small chocolate cups, and for a bookshop density that seems implausible for a village this size.

Castelo de Guimarães

The route ends where Portugal began. The castle of Guimarães rises over the city traditionally called the cradle of the nation: Afonso Henriques, the first king, was probably born here around 1109, and the decisive battle of São Mamede was fought in its shadow in 1128. The castle itself is a stern tenth century granite keep with seven square towers, restored in the twentieth century after centuries of neglect.

The historic centre below is a UNESCO site in its own right, a maze of granite palaces, arcaded squares and balconies heavy with flower boxes. Pair the castle with the Palace of the Dukes of Braganza next door, and leave time for the cable car up to Penha for the view over the whole valley.

Planning the route

A practical order is to start in the north and work south. Day one: Guimarães. Day two: drive or train down to Óbidos, sleep inside the walls. Day three: Alcobaça in the morning, Batalha in the afternoon. Days four and five: Lisbon, with the Jerónimos and Belém together, and a day trip to Sintra for the Pena Palace. All seven sit within three hours of each other, which is part of what makes the list such a good skeleton for a first trip to Portugal.

For a broader itinerary that folds these monuments into beaches and wine country, see our guide to the best places to visit in Portugal.

Related reading on Touristic: Chasing the Perfect Pastel de Nata in Lisbon, Vasco da Gama and the Sea Route to India, Sintra's Misty Palaces: A Romantic's Daydream.