A Jewel in the North

In a way, the 1147 siege of the Lisbon castle summed up a several-decades-long campaign that brough about a seismic change of Portuguese destiny by turning Portugal into an independent country - and contributing to its national flag, to boot

The five blue shields on the flag represent the same number of Moorish kings defeated by Portuguese forces. The catalyst behind the campaign and the leader of the forces was Afonso Henriques, by then already the first king in the history of the country 

(the seven castles surrounding the shields were added to the flag about a century later to commemorate the conquests by the king Afonso III in Algarve). Afonso I's success dated back to his early childhood when his personality was shaped - as well as his path chosen for him - by his very unfortunate and rather unusual, even if not completely unique, family situation.

Afonso's father, Henry of Burgundy, was the Count of Portugal, his county being contested and coveted by Spanish kingdom of Leon. Rather than resorting to arms, the parties decided on a dynastic marriage thus turning Theresa, one of the Princesses of Leon, into the Countess of Portugal. Under normal circumstances, Afonso's eldest brother, Urraca, would've inherited the county and kept it shared by the competing houses. As chance would have it, Henry was killed in a battle in 1112, when Afonso was either 4 or 6 years old (his exact year of birth has remained under dispute). Theresa's allegiance, split between her father and her husband, suddenly came to an end, and the temptation to prove her loyalty to the former turned out to be too strong. Enraged by the prospect of being handed over to Leon, the county's nobility rallied around the young prince who was raised and tutored by Henry's loyal supporter Egas Moniz. A bitter rivalry between the two factions resulted in an exile of Afonso when he was 14, and subsequent battles, the last of which - the Battle of Guimaraes/Sao Mamede in 1128 - proved to be decisive. Theresa was captured and sent back to Leon. Afonso became the sole ruler of Portugal. That battle and the fact that Afonso was born in or around Guimaraes (Viseu being one of his possible birthplaces), put the northern town firmly on the map. 

A successful, well-functioning country is similar to an orchestra where all instruments team up to create harmony of the whole, while each of them - boisterous drums, regal harps, cheerful oboes, elegant violines - has its own distinct character and personality. In the "Orchestra of Portugal", Guimaraes is a piccolo flute. A rather small town - even the whole municipality is populated by about 160,000 people, and the town proper has no more than 50,000 - it has chosen not just one but two distinct personalities despite its size (or, maybe, because of it!). One is "Nature's own backyard". Guimaraes gives off a distinct feel of a garden or a park: plants, flower beds, lawns seem to be everywhere, enwrapping and incorporating the urban life. Images like these

are just about everywhere. Guimaraes' second identity is "history museum". Not only the castle on the above picture but most buildings, squares, courtyards are a celebration of the town's medieval past-turn-present

And then, there are hidden gems - some of them in plain sight.

It's easy to soak in Guimaraes: all you have to do is to walk around for hours wherever your whim will take you. It's much more difficult to discern something truly unique disguised as commonplace. Something like this, for example

A plaque with seemingly random names and numbers doesn't seem to make much sense - unless you know that it's the city's fire alarm map. The names are the districts, and the numbers advise how many times the fire bell tolls to indicate that a fire has broken out in that particular district. The poorer the district, the higher the number - the higher the number the longer it takes to alert the residents of the affected district. Medieval socioeconomics at its finest...

Another example is even more striking

It's hard to imagine anybody would pay attention to one particular tree in a town where there are hundreds if not thousands of them. That perception might change once you've learned that the seemingly ordinary tree is visible from everywhere in Guimaraes! For most places, the highest visible object - short of a mountain top - would be manmade: a palace, a castle, a skyscraper... Guimaraes, that northern jewel of Portugal, chose a tree as its, arguably, most powerful symbol. 

Stories like that would remain largely unknown but for people willing and eager to share them with their town's guests - and just as success breeds success, unique places attract special people that are willing and eager. People like Joana

who would turn a group walking tour (a standard practice for many tour operators) into a private one. In other words, she would spend hours to introduce Guimaraes to just one or two guests - to eventually bring them to one building that, in its own way, sums up Guimaraes history in three words