Portugal's Guimaraes set to reign as Europe's capital of culture

By Manuel Meyer Dec 6, 2011, 3:06 GMT

Guimaraes, Portugal - 'And it was here that everything began,' says Luisa.

The Brazilian woman is standing before the baptismal font in the Sao Miguel chapel in Guimaraes, the basin in which Afonso Henriques is said to have been christened. He was the man who later on, as Afonso I, would be crowned as the first king of Portugal. Guimaraes also became the country's first capital.

As a result, the castle and the Sao Miguel chapel standing before it are national treasures for the Portuguese.

In 2012, the dreamlike university town of 52,000 people can revive some of its bygone glory, for together with the Slovenian city of Maribor, Guimaraes will reign as Europe's capital of culture.

When the festivities are held on January 21, Luisa and her partner Fernando, to their great regret, will no longer be in Portugal. As for so many of their compatriots from Brazil, a visit to Guimaraes, located some 300 kilometres north of the capital Portugal, was a must.

Whereas vacationers from elsewhere in Europe, or from Asia and the United States, tend to visit Porto or Braga when they go to the northern part of Portugal, many Portuguese and Brazilians search for their roots in Guimaraes. For them, the town at the foot of the Serra da Penha mountains is the cradle of the nation. 'Portugal was born here,' is inscribed in large letters on the fortress wall.

The castle in which Afonso Henrique was crowned king had fallen into ruin in the course of the centuries after later Portuguese kings moved their residence to Lisbon.

But the dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar had it thoroughly renovated during the 1940s in order to make it into a pilgrimage site for the Portuguese nation. As a result the castle, with it 27-metre-tall keep, is to this day considered one of Portugal's best-preserved medieval fortresses.

Luisa and Fernando are impressed by the stone slabs that cover the graves of the noble warriors in the chapel, as well as by the wall tapestries, weapons and furniture of the nearby palace of the Dukes of Braganca. These collections are a record of the entire sweep of Portuguese history.

Each stone in the medieval old town centre, which was declared a UNESCO world cultural heritage site in 2001, seems to have its own special history. A tour of the area must include the town hall dating from the 14th century, the church of Nuestra Senhora da Oliveira and the 1154-built monastery of Santa Marinha da Costa.

Magnificent residences with their artistically-decorated tile facades surround the Toural Square. Colourful half-timbered houses with slanting walls frame the picturesque squares of Oliveira and Santiago. In the evening, the restaurants with their medieval flair serve up, along with Portuguese wines, a number of local specialties, including dishes of Bacalhau, or stockfish.

Next year there might not be much left of the romantic coziness - at least this is the hope of Joao Serra.

'We are expecting up to 1.5 million tourists who will be visiting us in 2012 just for the culture programme alone,' says the president of the Guimaraes Foundation, which is in charge of the Cultural Capital activities.

Armed with a budget of 25 million euros (33 million dollars), Joao Serra and his team are creating a multi-faceted cultural programme of art exhibitions and music, theatre, and cinema events in which the focus will be on the people of Guimaraes.

There are also to be artists' residences set up and programmes which will be aimed at making Guimaraes into a place of 'creative work' beyond 2012, Joao Serra explains - and thereby help the university town, which has been hit hard by the economic crisis, to flourish anew.