Lamego's Castle

On the second day of visiting Lamego’s castle, a brand new pamphlet in English about the Lamego Castle District, arrived in the castle’s tourist office. We had seen the Portuguese pamphlets but they didn’t help us out very much. As I have mentioned, Portuguese is a hard language to figure out and most historical posters or information brochures in Lamego are only in Portuguese. Yay for the new pamphlet!

Yesterday, we met Andre, the information person at the castle. He was wonderful and spoke really well in English. Since we were part of the small handful of tourists there, he was able to spend a fair bit of time explaining a lot of things that have puzzled us about castles. He suggested that we come back the next day to see the archaeological museum. So we did.

The Lamego Castle sits on the higher of the two granite and schist hills (543m/1,781’), in the area where we are staying. The church with all the stairs is on the other hill. Both hilltops have wonderful views of the city, the grape terraces and the Coura, Balsemão and Varosa Rivers.

It doesn’t cost anything to go through the old walled city or castle so we spent a few hours just wandering, and wondering. There are two gates to enter and exit the city. The one facing the East is called the Sun Gate (1641) and the other one, carved in wood (18th Century) is called the Gate of the Figs. All the medieval streets and alleys are very narrow with cobblestone. People still live in the houses though some of them have been renovated.

All that is left of the castle is the old keep and some of the walls around the city. Documentation has shown that the castle has been on that site since the 10th Century. But before that, this ancient city was occupied by the Romans and became Christianised in the mid-6th century under the Visigoths. The Moors conquered much of Spain and Portugal during the 8th century and wars were fought between Christians and Muslims in the region until Fernando Magno de Leão defeated the Moors to re-establish the Christian Church.

Over time, the castle went through many changes. It became a stately residence of the Coutinhos family at the end of the 15th century but was in ruins by 1532. Archaeological investigation shows that there had been an ancient cemetery under it. Then it became the ‘city hall’ and even a jail.

Located within the walls that protected the city, there is a 20’ x 10’ cistern that is considered to be one of the ‘most remarkable urban cisterns of the medieval period (13th-14th centuries)’. It is a vaulted granite cistern dating back to times of Arab rule and bearing the signatures, in the form of pictographs, of master masons of the era. Actually there are many large stones all over the castle walls that have these drawings. I asked Andre about them and he told me that builders carved them on to show what work they had done, for their pay checks.

We were able to walk on the top of the renovated walls and we had a great view of the city and surrounding hills. The watchtower with its dungeon had even better views. It looks like displays had been set up but with the humidity of the area, it has caused all sorts of issues with equipment. No

We met Andre today in the Archaeological Centre and he gave us some more information about the exciting site that was discovered in Lamego. Within the walls, an old house was demolished and archaeologists found more than 2000 years of history in one rather small footprint.

The layers uncovered showed the earliest residential occupation of that space occurred during the Roman periods (1st - 5th centuries). Visigoth (5th - 7th centuries) artifacts were found, followed by a graveyard from the 9th to 10th centuries which was abandoned and covered with a new wall of the city in the 12th -13th centuries. Then, stones from the walls were taken down to build houses at a later time.

The most important thing found in this area was a jar filled with 600 Roman coins from the end of the 4rth century. They also found pieces of ceramics, glass and weights used for weaving. Quite a haul for a small site!

It made all the difference having a knowledgeable, young man like Andre take the time to explain things to us. His English was good and his passion for what he does was excellent.Read more