On a wall in the middle of Guimaraes somebody painted the words Aqui Nasceu Portugal, here Portugal was born, and for once the civic boast is close to accurate. Afonso Henriques was born in this town around 1109, was proclaimed here, and won the battle in 1128 that separated the county of Portucale from Leon and started the country. The castle he was probably born beneath is still standing at the top of the hill.
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The medieval centre below it is one of the best preserved in Iberia, UNESCO listed in 2001, and small enough to cross in fifteen minutes. Guimaraes was European Capital of Culture in 2012, which paid for a good deal of restoration, and it is a university town with a young population, which keeps it from being a museum. It sits in the Minho, the green wet northwest, fifty minutes from Porto.
What Makes Guimaraes Different to Pack For
The Minho is the wet corner of Portugal
This region gets substantially more rain than Lisbon or the Algarve, spread through the year and heaviest from October to April. Summers are warm at 26°C to 30°C and considerably more humid than the coast. Winters are cool and damp at 12°C to 14°C rather than cold.
A packable rain jacket is a year round item here, and a merino wool base layer for women handles the damp cold of a Minho winter, which feels sharper than the number because the air never dries out.
Granite paving, and a lot of it
The historic centre is paved in granite setts and slabs, polished by centuries of use, and the climb to the castle is a steady slope on the same surface. Wet granite is genuinely slippery, and it is wet often.
A mountain directly behind the town
Penha rises to 617 metres immediately above Guimaraes, reached by a cable car from the edge of the centre or by a winding road. It is cooler, windier and wetter than the town, with a sanctuary, boulder-strewn woods and paths through granite outcrops.
Compact, which changes how you pack
Almost everything is within ten minutes on foot. That argues for one comfortable pair of shoes and a small day bag rather than the usual city kit, and it makes Guimaraes an easy place to travel light.
Recommended Tours and Experiences
The Guimaraes Packing List
Footwear
One good pair of flat shoes with real grip, which will do the whole town. Granite setts when wet are the main hazard in Guimaraes and smooth soles are how people fall on the slope up to the castle.
For Penha, the paths around the sanctuary and the boulder fields, or the Citania de Briteiros hill fort north of the town, waterproof hiking shoes are the right choice. The ground up there is wet granite, moss and loose stone almost all year.
Clothing
Layers, and a waterproof in every season. Long sleeves for the evenings, which are cool even in July because of the altitude and the hills.
Cover for churches, of which there are several worth going into, with the usual shoulders and knees expectation. Guimaraes is a normal, neat northern Portuguese town and dresses modestly without being formal; the student population means the bars are relaxed.
For sun and rain
A wide brim sun hat and sunscreen for summer, when the squares are hot and unshaded by the middle of the day. An umbrella works here, unlike on the windier Atlantic coast, but a hood is more reliable on Penha.
Practical
Cash for the smaller places and the market. Guimaraes is inexpensive by Portuguese standards, which are already low. A day bag rather than a rucksack, since distances are short. The train from Porto takes about an hour and runs regularly, and the station is a ten minute walk from the centre.
What to Wear at Key Sites
The castle and the church of Sao Miguel
A tenth century fortification rebuilt in the twelfth, with a keep you can climb and walls you can walk, and beside it the small Romanesque church where Afonso Henriques is traditionally said to have been baptised.
Practically: the wall walk is narrow, uneven and has drops without much in the way of barriers, and the keep stair is steep and worn. Sensible shoes, and hold on. It is a short climb from the centre and the view over the red roofs is worth it.
The Paco dos Duques de Braganca
A fifteenth century palace built for the first Duke of Braganca, heavily and controversially reconstructed under Salazar in the 1930s and used as a presidential residence. Inside are tapestries, armour and a large hall with a ship's keel ceiling.
Practically: the reconstruction is not authentic and it is worth knowing that before you go, because the building you walk through is substantially a twentieth century idea of what a medieval palace should look like. A combined ticket covers it with the castle.
The historic centre
Largo da Oliveira with its gothic canopy and the olive tree it is named for, the Praca de Santiago, wooden balconied houses, and the Alberto Sampaio museum in a former collegiate church.
Practically: this is the part of Guimaraes that earns the UNESCO listing and it takes an unhurried afternoon. The squares fill with tables in the evening. The Alberto Sampaio holds the tunic reputedly worn by King Joao I at the battle of Aljubarrota in 1385, which is a genuinely remarkable survival.
Penha
The mountain above the town, with a twentieth century sanctuary, a landscape of enormous granite boulders, caves and paths among them, and a view across the Minho.
Practically: the cable car takes about ten minutes and does not run in high wind or in some winter weather, so check before relying on it. It is markedly colder and windier at the top than in the town, often by five or six degrees, and cloud sits on it. Take the layer and the jacket even on a warm day.
The Couros tannery quarter
A district of stone vats and drying towers from the leather industry that made the town's money, restored as part of the Capital of Culture work and now partly university buildings.
Practically: free to walk through, and the interpretive centre explains the vats. Uneven ground and open water in places.
Braga and Citania de Briteiros
Braga, Portugal's religious capital, is twenty five minutes away. Citania de Briteiros is a large Iron Age hill fort settlement with reconstructed round houses, north of the town.
Practically: Briteiros is exposed, grassy, often wet and involves a walk uphill from the entrance. Proper shoes.
What Not to Bring
Leave smooth soled shoes, which wet granite will punish. Leave a bag with no waterproof in it, in any month.
Leave the assumption that northern Portugal is warm and dry, because the Minho is the green part of the country for a reason. Leave more than you need generally, since the town is small and you will not use it.
Essential Resources for Women in Guimaraes
Emergency numbers in Portugal: 112 is the national emergency number for police, ambulance and fire, with English speaking operators. The PSP police the city centre and the GNR the surrounding countryside.
Tourist support: there is no dedicated tourist police unit in Guimaraes, but the PSP station in the city will take a report and the tourist office in the Praca de Sao Tiago is helpful with language. A theft requires a police report before an insurance claim or a replacement passport.
US Embassy: the embassy is in Lisbon at Avenida das Forcas Armadas, telephone +351 21 727 3300, at pt.usembassy.gov, around three and a half hours away, with Porto an hour away as the practical staging point for flights. Enrol in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program at step.state.gov before you travel.
Main hospital or clinic: the Hospital da Senhora da Oliveira in Guimaraes has a 24 hour urgencia department, with Porto's large hospitals an hour away for anything serious. EU and UK visitors should carry the European Health Insurance Card or the UK Global Health Insurance Card; everyone else needs travel insurance.
Official health authority: the Portuguese Directorate General of Health at dgs.pt.
US State Department travel advisory for Portugal: current advisory level and detail. Read it directly rather than relying on this page.
UK FCDO travel advice for Portugal: entry requirements, safety and health guidance, including the summer wildfire advice, which applies to the hills of the Minho and has closed roads in this district in recent years.
Official tourism authority: Visit Portugal at visitportugal.com, with the Porto and North regional tourism service and the Guimaraes municipal tourist office for the cable car timetable, museum hours and the dates of the Gualterianas festival in August.
Solo women safety assessment: Guimaraes is one of the safest and most comfortable small cities in Portugal for a woman travelling alone. It is compact, prosperous, well lit, and busy in the evening with students and families rather than with a drinking crowd. Violent crime against visitors is very rare, street harassment is uncommon and mild, and eating or drinking alone in the squares is completely ordinary. The student population makes the atmosphere relaxed and young without producing the nightlife problems of a resort. Petty theft is modest and limited to the usual crowded moments, and even that is less of an issue than in Porto or Lisbon. The practical risks are physical and weather related rather than criminal. Wet granite is the main one: the setts in the historic centre and the slope to the castle are slippery for much of the year and falls are the commonest injury visitors report. The castle walls and keep have uneven surfaces and drops with limited protection. On Penha, the weather changes fast, cloud comes down, the boulder paths are wet and mossy, and the cable car stops running in wind, which can leave you walking down a long road in rain; check the last car before you go up. Mobile coverage is good in the town and patchy in the woods above it. Transport is reliable: trains to Porto run regularly and finish in the evening rather than late, so a night out in Porto means staying there. The town itself is safe to walk across at any hour, which is not something worth saying about many places.
Reading On
Guimaraes is a comfortable day from Porto and a better overnight than most people give it, because the centre empties of day visitors by six and the squares are at their best after that. The Portugal travel guide for women is the parent for the country, with the Portugal packing list for women for a multi region trip. Nearby, the Braga packing list for women covers the religious capital twenty five minutes away, the Porto travel guide for women the city an hour south, and the Douro Valley packing list for women the wine country inland. South, the Aveiro packing list for women and the Coimbra packing list for women continue down the country toward the Lisbon travel guide for women. The travel packing guide for women is the parent for all destinations. For why wool is the right fibre in the wettest corner of Portugal, where nothing quite dries, the best merino wool base layers for women explains it, and the Roman Trail collection is where the tops themselves live.
If the outer journey is calling you, the inner one usually is too. Explore SoulMap at romantrail.com/blogs/soulmap.
