Braga

Water cascades down a Baroque stairway that zigzags heavenward, each landing a fountain for a different sense — sight, sound, smell, taste, touch. The granite is warm underfoot, the air scented with incense and bougainvillea, and at the top the church of Bom Jesus do Monte presides over a view running toward the Atlantic. Braga is Portugal at its most devotional, and devotion here dresses in theatrical extravagance.

Braga is among Portugal's oldest cities, an episcopal seat since the third century whose archbishop still carries the ancient title of Primate of the Spains. The UNESCO-listed Bom Jesus sanctuary is the defining landmark — the monumental stairway climbing 116 metres through allegorical fountains and chapels, its water-balance funicular laid in 1882, among the oldest of its kind in the world. The old city below holds the Sé's nine accumulated centuries of Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque, and the two make distinct chapters, sanctuary hill above and old city below — with worship and ceremony rightly coming first: this is a living episcopal seat, and its Holy Week processions, among Portugal's most elaborate, belong to its people before its visitors. The university keeps the café-lined streets young, and the Minho's vine terraces begin where the suburbs end.