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Forte de São Francisco Xavier
Otherwise known as the Castelo do Queijo (Cheese Castle) because of the wedge of rock it stands upon, Forte de São Francisco Xavier looks every inch the archetypal fortress with its sturdy ramparts, watchtowers and drawbridge. Built in 1661, it harbours a small weaponry exhibition,
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Ponte Romana
The city’s pièce de résistance, this elegant 31-arched bridge across the Rio Lima is now limited to foot traffic. Most of it dates from the 14th century, though the segment on the north bank by the village of Arcozelo is bona fide Roman. Largo de Camões , with a fountain resembling
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Ribeiro Frio Trout Farm
Apart from being the launch pad for some great mountain walks, Ribeiro Frios other attraction is what must be the worlds most visited trout farm. Hundreds of trout chase each other round huge tanks fed with icy cold levada water, the whole place a fishy, multi-level symphony of mov
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Casa
Housed in a stunning art-nouveau mansion, this little known museum presents António Medeiros e Almeidas exquisite fine- and decorative-arts collection. Highlights include 18th-century Flemish tapestries, Qing porcelain, Thomas Gainsborough paintings, wondrous mechanised clocks and
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Aquário da Madeira
Madeiras top aquarium hides away like a hermit crab in a renovated stone fortress. Inside, twelve tanks represent various ocean habitats around Madeira, the biggest of these containing 500,000L of water and big enough to accommodate divers. The whole colourful underwater world is h
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Gil Eannes
Demanding attention on the waterfront near Largo 5 de Outubro is a pioneering naval hospital ship, the Gil Eannes (zheel yan- ish) . Now restored, the ship once provided on-the-job care for those fishing off the coast of Newfoundland. Visitors can clamber around the steep decks and
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Museu Visigótico
Found just beyond the castle, the unusual Visigothic museum is housed in the former Igreja de Santo Amaro , parts of which date from the early 6th century when it was a Visigothic church – so it’s one of Portugal’s oldest standing buildings. Inside, the original columns display int
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Centro de Interpretaçaõ da Serra da Estrela
This regional museum provides an excellent introduction to the Serra da Estrela region. A nine-minute 3D film in English or Portuguese takes you flying around the mountains’ main points of interest. Multimedia displays include an interactive scale model of the Serra. CISE also has
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Centro Português de Fotografia
This stately yet muscular building (1796) once served as a prison and now houses a photography museum. You actually walk through the thick iron gates and into the cells to see the work, which lends the intriguing exhibits even more gravitas. Immediately south of the museum are the
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Câmara de Lobos
Every visitor to Funchal at some point finds themselves in this adjoining fishing village, whether at the end of a hike, on an open-top bus, coming down from Cabo Girão or on an island tour. Its the centre of Madeiras traditional fishing industry, with the colourful boats hauled up
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Town Walls & Aqueduto
Walls still stand around most of the inner town. Along the west side (follow Rua dos Arcos) run the impressive remains of an 11th-century aqueduct . At the southern end is a huge 17th-century wheel pump (aka noria ), once used for pumping water along the aqueduct to the nearby Palá
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Pavilhão do Conhecimento
Kids won’t grumble about science at the interactive Pavilhão do Conhecimento, where they can launch hydrogen rockets, lie unhurt on a bed of nails, experience the gravity on the moon and get dizzy on a high-wire bicycle. Budding physicists have fun whipping up tornadoes and blowin
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Jardins Temáticos
Green space is abundant in Ponte de Lima, but this small, intriguing garden with rose bushes and lemon-filled trellises next to a public swimming pool on the west side of the river is notable because each May it hosts a competition where 12 artists create temporary gardens built ar
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Igreja de Nossa Senhora dos Prazeres e Museu Episcopal
Several museums of religious artworks opened in Beja in 2008. So great was the wealth of the Catholic Church that no single space can display all of the paintings and other items. The most attractive is housed in this restored church. While the church is stunning, perhaps only tho
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Capela das Almas
On the Rua Santa Catarina stands the strikingly ornate, azulejo-clad Capela das Almas. Magnificent panels here depict scenes from the lives of various saints, including the death of St Francis and the martyrdom of St Catherine. Interestingly, Eduardo Leite painted the tiles in a cl
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Sealife Porto
Some 5000 marine creatures splash in the tanks at Sealife, where kiddie highlights include a shark tunnel and a rock pool for handling crabs, starfish and sea urchins. Aquatic oddities include glow-in-the-dark jellyfish, South American leaf fish and cow-nosed rays. See if you can f
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Quatro Águas
You can walk 2km east along the river, past the fascinating, snowlike salt pans to Quatro Águas. The salt pans produce tip-top table salt and attract feeding birds in summer, including flamingos. As well as being the jumping-off point for Ilha de Tavira, the seaside hub of Quatro Á
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Igreja do Bom Jesus
The fishing village of Ponta Delgada, 30km west of Santana, is worth a brief halt for its authentic remoteness and to visit the baroque Igreja do Bom Jesus. The church houses an 18th-century crucifix which was mysteriously washed ashore in 1740. Its the focus of the local Festa de
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Cais da Ribeira
This riverfront promenade is postcard Porto, taking in the whole spectacular sweep of the city, from Ribeiras skinny pastel houses to the barcos rabelos (flat-bottomed boats) once used to transport port from the Douro. Early evening buskers serenade crowds and chefs fire up grills
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Museu Paleocristão
North of the old town is this museum, which features a partly reconstructed line of 6th-century Roman columns and poignant funerary stones, some of which are beautifully carved with birds, hearts and wreaths. It was the site of a huge Palaeo-Christian basilica, and the adjacent cem
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