Visit the Quinta do Rosário - Louriçal do Campo

Visiting the Solar dos Viscondes de Portalegre - Castelo Branco

The Solar dos Viscondes de Portalegre, located in the Parish of Castelo Branco, built in 1743, is an old property of the family Coutinho Refoios, now owned by the Municipality
It is a building of markedly Renaissance brands. Its facade presents a symmetrical disposition with respect to the architectural elements. In this set stand out the bay windows, for harmony and visual beauty.
At the rear there is a garden with flower beds delimited to boxwood and large mulberry trees.

Visit the Solar dos Motas - Castelo Branco

Solar dos Motas, located in the parish of Castelo Branco, is a seventeenth-century building, sober and elegant, built by the Guilherme da Cunha family. It underwent important works of improvement, in the 20th century, housing, since then, the District Archive of Castelo Branco.

Visit the Municipal Swimming Pool of Castelo Branco

The Swimming Pool Praia de Castelo Branco, located in the Parish of Castelo Branco, is a reference leisure area in the Region, for the excellence of the conditions offered to swimmers and the extensive areas of the water plan and the surrounding lawn.
During the summer, in the months of July and August, there is water aerobics, aqua zumba, play and educational activities for children and lots of activity for users of the Pool-Beach.

Visit the Episcopal Palace of Castelo Branco

The Episcopal Palace of Castelo Branco, located in the Parish of Castelo Branco, today the Francisco Tavares Proença Júnior Museum, is an example of residential, Renaissance, baroque and rococo religious architecture.
At the end of the 16th century, Bishop Nuno de Noronha, bishop of Guarda, ordered the construction of the Episcopal Palace of Castelo Branco. Through the lapidary and emblazoned engraving we can verify that the building work began in May 1596, concluding two years later. The building was intended for the temporary residence of the prelates, during the winter periods, since the climate of Castelo Branco was a little milder than that of Guarda. In 1771, with the creation of the diocese, the Palace of Castelo Branco became, then, permanent episcopal residence.
It was only in 1711 that the residence of Castelo Branco was the object of rebuilding, by D. João de Mendonça. At that time the garden was built, and a garden garden.
From the date of his inauguration, in 1782, the second bishop of Castelo Branco, D. Frei Vicente Ferrer da Rocha, soon realized works of improvement in the palace and some interventions in the gardens and the spatial organization of the forest. With the collaboration of the Dominican architect and friar Daniel da Sagrada Família, interventions were made in the body erected to the north that includes the staircase and the noble door, the balcony, the colonnade and the entrance hall, which gave the palace a greater capacity.
In 1786, there was a great increase to the purchase of ornamental pieces that populated the entire palace.
Antecede the palace a large walled courtyard, to where it is facing the main facade. This is two stories, all the upper floor features noble floors, by the use of bay windows topped by countercurved pediments, as opposed to the single, quadrangular windows of the ground floor.
The façade facing the garden is poorer, and still features elements of the old sixteenth-century building, where a loggia is evident. Also in the interior one can still see structures of the 16th century, now occupied by exhibition halls and already very impoverished, the old chapel with gilded carved ceiling with paintings, from the XVIII century, which represent the Litanies of the Virgin and other allegories to the Weapons of Chastity.
The constructive typology of the palace influenced many of the constructions of the time and later, having become a reference for the architecture of that zone.

Visit the Silk Museum - Castelo Branco

The Silk Museum, located in the Parish of Castelo Branco, under the Portuguese Association of Parents and Friends of the Mentally Deficient Citizen (APPACDM) in Castelo Branco, was created to make known to the general public the History of Silk production in Portugal. Silkworm's life cycle, the conventional and state-of-the-art applications that can be made from the use of this poorly known and yet invaluable product.
The Museum is made up of five rooms. In room one, information about the silk is given, starting from the general until arriving at the particular one. The visit begins with the presentation of the Silk Route, the sericulture in our territory, even before the formation of nationality, sericulture in Beira Interior and finally, with a chronological analysis, the sericícola activity in APPACDM.
Room two - Audiovisual Room - is the space for the projection of a small film about the production of silk, with the collaboration of different partners. The remaining rooms are called: Bicho ao Fio; From Wire to Fabric and from Fabric to Final Product. In these spaces can be understood the process of producing the silk, to know some instruments used in the traditional method to obtain the silk and to appreciate some objects of silk.
In the Technical Room, younger visitors can carry out activities with the purpose of consolidating the knowledge and information presented during the visit, in an experience accompanied and supervised by specialized personnel.

Visit the Monte de São Martinho - Castelo Branco

The Monte de São Martinho, located in the parish of Castelo Branco, is an imposing hill of quartezítica formation, with dense endogenous vegetation of pleasant natural beauty.
From the top, you can see all around the plain of the Tagus Valley, and on the west side stands the town of Castelo Branco.
Everywhere, at the base and on the hill of St. Martin, traces of not only the Roman presence in the region, but also marks of a prehistoric past, submerge from a distant past. The earliest remains trace back to a fortified settlement of the Bronze Age (castro), the walls and fragments of pottery and lithic material (polished stone instruments) found there.
In the autumn of 1903, a series of excavations at the site, they discovered three epigraphs of the Bronze Age. The trail of thin-grained granite engraving, measuring 2.22 meters high and 40 centimeters wide. By its structure, this may resemble a menir, however, should not be confused with megalithic monuments. The engraving engraved on the stele represents a human figure, perhaps of a warrior, from which appear four short horns, or perhaps a helmet adorned with four feathers. The figure holds a bow and arrow over his head. On the left side of the warrior we have a sword and on the right side, a belt and a mirror.
The Monte de S. Martinho and the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Mcoles constitute a rich space in archaeological, religious, ecological, rural, geomorphological and visual resources.
The Monte de S. Martinho is inserted in the so-called "Archaeological Triangle of Castelo Branco" that includes the area between the chapels of Nossa Senhora de Mércoles, Santa Ana and the mountain.
The archaeological interest of the place was reinforced by the discovery of a Roman dam next to the Chapel of Our Lady of Mércoles, by the existence of a Roman / medieval way and by the abundance of ceramic fragments and architectural structures of the Roman Period.

Visit the Church of São Miguel and the Cathedral of Castelo Branco

The Igreja de São Miguel and Sé Cathedral of Castelo Branco, is located in Castelo Branco parish.
This church dates back to the Middle Ages.
Originally of Romanesque design, it has undergone alterations throughout the centuries, being nowadays mostly visible the elements of baroque and rococo architecture. The arch of the cruise was altered to about 1608 with still visible vestiges of the original structure of the sixteenth century. The main campaigns of architectural intervention took place in 1682, visible in the lower two levels of the Baroque facade, and in 1691, with the introduction of paintings by Bento Coelho in eight chapels. In 1771, with the passage from Castelo Branco to Diocese, the church rises the cathedral and receives at that time works of improvement. In 1785 the chapel was rebuilt and in 1791 Peter Alexandrino's paintings were introduced in the altarpiece (from 1785) and in the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament. Other beneficiation interventions were carried out in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The main façade is dominated by three portals on the ground level (lateral with triangular pediment and higher central with interrupted curved pediment), two windows flank a niche with a statue of Saint Michael on the intermediate level, circular oculus on the upper level, and two side bell towers. In the interior, the longitudinal nave presents six lateral altars in gilded carving.
It has been classified as Property of Public Interest since 1978.

Visit the Fountain of the Town Square - Castelo Branco

Visit the Hermitage of Our Lady of Mundos - Castelo Branco

The Hermitage of Nossa Senhora de Mércoles, located in the Parish of Castelo Branco, is a small sanctuary where a religious festival is held, accompanied by a popular fair, which begins on the third Sunday of Easter and lasts three days. The festivity originates in a pilgrimage that began to make to the sanctuary, in 1601, in the day of the Good Shepherd, for being attributed to Our Lady of M Wednesdays the fact of having freed the city of an epidemic.

Visit the Bank of Portugal Building - Castelo Branco

The Banco de Portugal Building, located in the Parish of Castelo Branco, is a project with the traces of the architect Salles Viana, and was inaugurated in 1892. An architectural example of an era of indefinite production presents characteristics of classicism, baroque and Gothic.

Visit the Castelo Branco City Hall Building

The Castelo Branco Town Hall Building is the Old Manor of the Viscounts of Oleiros, an eighteenth-century building of Italian taste and located in the Parish of Castelo Branco.
The main façade has central staircase with two converging flights and wrought iron guard of vertical bars. Inside there are two floors with functional differentiation. The access to the noble floor is made through an external staircase. It has a main atrium with four symmetrical doors whose frame presents curvilinear cuts; It integrates lambril of polychrome tiles that represent scenes of hunting and fishing.

Visit the Fountain of Saint Mark - Castelo Branco

The fountain of San Marcos, located in the parish of Castelo Branco, was built at the end of the 16th century, at a time when the suburbs of the village grew and there was a need to make.
Of Mannerist structure, the fountain is composed by a back defined by two pilasters flanked by volutes that rests in a rectangular tank. At the same time, the decorative program features elements inspired by the Manueline architecture, since reliefs were engraved with the representation of the national shield, flanked to the right by the armillary sphere and left by fleur-de-lis under the Cross of Christ. By the middle of the nineteenth century the source was no longer used to supply the population.
It has the source on the slope of the Castle.

Visit the Fountain of the Millennium Rotunda - Castelo Branco

Visit the São Martinho Waterfall - Castelo Branco

The waterfall of São Martinho, located in the Parish of Castelo Branco is a former city librarian.

Visit the Arch Bishop's House - Castelo Branco

The Casa do Arco do Bispo, located in the Parish of Castelo Branco, which will exist since the 16th century. XIII, was temporary residence of the Bishops of the Guard.
The arch of the walkway consists of perfect back arches resting on faceted pilasters.
In the posterior facade it is visible the Porta Monumental, access to the residence of the Bishop.

Visit the Chapel of Saint Martin - Castelo Branco

The chapel of São Martinho, located in the parish of Castelo Branco, presents a very peculiar architecture, standing out the dome of the head. It may be the reuse of a morabite, a place of prayer for Islam.

Visit the Chapel of Sant'ana - Castelo Branco

Visit the Lentiscais River Quay - Castelo Branco

The Cais fluvial dos Lentiscais is located in the river Ponsul, parish of Castelo Branco, and is endowed with leisure spaces, parking and an intermodal area for buses.
The "BALCON DEL TAJO", a tourist vessel with capacity for 80 people, which already operated in Spanish waters, started to operate in Portuguese waters, crossing the Cais de Lentiscais (Castelo Branco) and the Cement of Cedillo (Spain) . The boat travels through the Tejo Internacional area.

Visiting the River Liria - Benquerencias