Lamego
"Six hundred and eighty-six steps. I counted because I needed to do something other than think about my legs."
You see the staircase before you see anything else. Coming into Lamego by road, the Sanctuary of Nossa Senhora dos Remédios appears suddenly above the town — a baroque cascade of granite balustrades and fountains and pedimented landings, climbing the forested hillside in fourteen flights. It looks like something a Jésuite architect dreamed after reading too many descriptions of Rome, and in a way it is exactly that: the Portuguese baroque at its most theatrical, transplanted to a river valley in the northern interior where theatricality feels incongruous and therefore even more powerful. I sat in the town square below and looked up for a long time before attempting the ascent.
The climb takes about twenty minutes at a respectful pace, longer if you stop at the fountains and the azulejo panels that decorate the balustrades along the way. Each landing has a different sculptural programme — allegorical figures, coats of arms, baroque urns — and the fountains play even in October, their sound following you upward. At the top, the sanctuary itself is more modest than the staircase promises, a cream-and-white church of the late eighteenth century whose interior is refined without being remarkable. But the view from the terrace down over Lamego’s rooftops to the Douro valley spreading westward in the afternoon light is worth every one of the 686 steps.
Down in the town, Lamego has a medieval cathedral and a regional museum that contains some of the finest sixteenth-century Flemish tapestries in the Iberian peninsula — eight tapestries from the Brussels workshops, depicting scenes from the life of Ovid, hanging in a silence that feels almost reverential. Then there is the food. The presunto de Lamego — smoked cured ham from the local black Bisaro pigs, hung and dried in the mountain air of the Varosa valley — has a depth and mineral quality that sets it apart from the more famous jamón across the border. I bought a full leg at the market and transported it back to Porto wrapped in newspaper, and it didn’t survive the week.
The sparkling wine of the Varosa valley, produced under the Caves Raposeira label about fifteen kilometres from Lamego, is Portugal’s answer to a question most wine drinkers haven’t thought to ask: what would Portuguese grapes taste like made into método clássico? The answer is lighter and more aromatic than champagne, with a biscuity quality and a dryness that makes it work extraordinarily well with the presunto. The winery offers tours, but the caves’ sparkling wines are available in every restaurant and supermarket in town for prices that feel almost offensive in their reasonableness.
When to go: Lamego works well across seasons. September brings the Festival of Nossa Senhora dos Remédios, a pilgrimage that draws tens of thousands of devotees and involves processions, folk music, and a market that takes over the lower town for days. Spring is ideal for the presunto market and quieter streets. The staircase is illuminated in the evenings and is particularly beautiful at dusk.