What's on in Portugal this weekend: 10 days of open heritage start on Friday
European Heritage Days run from 18 to 27 September, with activities in almost every district and much of it free. Here is what is happening between Friday and Sunday, from a hospital ship in Viana do Castelo to a wine press cut into bare rock.
Friday opens the European Heritage Days in Portugal, and for ten days a lot of buildings that normally keep their doors shut will not. This year’s theme is “Reviver, resistir, reinventar” — revive, resist, reinvent. The practical part is that the national programme runs from 18 to 27 September, covers almost every district, and is free more often than not.
This is the first of its two weekends.
Saturday, in Lisbon and the north
Palácio Fronteira, in São Domingos de Benfica, throws its garden open from 10am to 6pm, free, with last admission at 5.30pm. The guided Secrets of Palácio Fronteira tours leave at 10am, midday, 2.30pm and 4pm, and those are ticketed.
Further north, Penafiel’s municipal museum takes visitors up to the Castro de Monte Mozinho on Saturday morning, 10.30am to 12.30pm. It is a hillfort that only makes sense with somebody standing there explaining the stones.
At the Monastery of Batalha, the 4pm to 5.30pm tour is led by the young people and adults of Associação Casa do Mimo, which supports people with disabilities. Same monastery, different guides, and that is rather the point.
Over in Oliveira do Bairro, the Bairrada ethnomusicology museum hosts a Teatro de Robertos puppet show from 3pm to 5pm, performed by Teatro e Marionetas de Mandrágora. Expect sticks, shouting and delighted children. The tradition is older than most of the buildings on this list.
A ship, a gunpowder works and a press cut into rock
From Friday, the hospital ship Gil Eannes joins the programme with free-flow visits to its museum decks, 9.30am to 7pm, in Viana do Castelo. She was built to shadow the Portuguese cod fleet, and the sick bay, operating room and cabins are all walkable.
Also on Friday, from 5pm to 8pm, the Vale de Milhaços gunpowder factory near Setúbal opens for a session on its own memory. It is one of the most significant pieces of industrial heritage in the country, and not somewhere you can drop into on an ordinary Saturday.
Sunday belongs to the interior. At Celorico da Beira, between 4pm and 7pm, there is a historical re-enactment of winemaking in a press carved straight into the rock, beside the old primary school at Fornotelheiro. In Alcobaça, the National Wine Museum runs guided tours from 10am to 5pm. And in Avis, the archaeology centre holds a rare open day, 11am to 4.30pm.
In Leiria the castle opens from Friday: ÁGORA returns for three evenings of music, performance, installations and workshops, 7.30pm to 10pm. The full listing, filterable by district and activity type, sits on the official Heritage Days platform.
If heritage is not your weekend
Iminente is in Marvila until Sunday, in a disused industrial school, marking ten years.
In Cascais, Chefs on Fire takes over Parque Marechal Carmona on Saturday and Sunday, midday to midnight, with more than 40 cooks working with nothing but fire, smoke and wood. Capacity is capped at 5,000 a day, tickets start at €50, and food and drink are paid for inside. Cascais station is ten minutes away on foot.
And if your weekend happens a long way south and out in the Atlantic, the Columbus Festival closes on Sunday in Vila Baleira, free, with the programme running from 3pm to 11pm.
Image: Carlos Luis M C da Cruz / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
