
Discovering Portugal
Roughly rectangular in shape and with a population of around ten million people, Portugal has much to offer the modern visitor – young and old alike.
Roughly rectangular in shape and with a population of around ten million people, Portugal has much to offer the modern visitor – young and old alike.
From Atlantic-fresh fish to the wild meats of the mountains, Portuguese food is distinctive and varied with many of the most popular regional dishes having evolved from age-old recipes based […]
Looking upwards on a clear night, it’s difficult not to wonder how the heavens guided Portugal’s great discoverers towards new horizons in the late Middle Ages. By means of ancient […]
When visitors arrive in Lisbon‘s historic centre of Belém, the first building they see is the imposing Jerónimos Monastery, impressive for its sheer size and without doubt one of the most spectacular monuments in […]
Taking a stroll down Lisbon‘s memory lane, through the historic square mile of Belém, the place from which Portugal‘s fearless adventurers set sail for unknown lands in the 15th and 16th centuries, is one of the […]
Portugal’s most celebrated poet, Luís Vaz de Camões (c. 1524-1580), lived an extraordinarily eventful life by any stretch of the imagination. As a young man he fought in Morocco and paid […]
Portuguese writing officially began in the 12th century when Henri de Bourgogne, father of Afonso Henriques, Portugal’s first king, brought with his court several French scholars and literary gentlemen.
The history of Portugal’s ground-breaking association with the seas spanned a hundred years from 1415-1515. Widely labelled as the Age of Discovery, this epoch-making period saw Portuguese navigators sail across uncharted […]
Spurred by Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), the Portuguese discovered precisely what Columbus was seeking – the fabled Indies. They also charted new sea routes halfway around the world to […]
Purpose-built for traversing the oceans, the wide-hulled caravel (caravela in Portuguese) was arguably Portugal’s most significant contribution to maritime history and an integral part of Prince Henry the Navigator’s ambitious […]