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Estremoz
Vila Viçosa and Marvão
José Luís Peixoto presentsAndréa del Fuego
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Estremoz
Vila Viçosa and Marvão
By Andréadel Fuego
“And so began my steps in the Alentejo, learning to navigate a land that defies measurement. The sundial lacks enough hands to grasp a time larger than itself — the time of a land heavy with sun and labour.”
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MeetAndréa del Fuego
Andréa del Fuego is one of the most original voices in contemporary Brazilian literature. Born in São Paulo in 1975, she holds a master’s degree in Philosophy from the University of São Paulo, has led creative writing workshops for over a decade, and writes as if observing the world through a rare sliver of light — with lucidity, strangeness, and beauty. Her birth name is Andréa Fátima dos Santos, but she adopted the pseudonym “del Fuego” in homage to Luz del Fuego — dancer, naturist, feminist, and the first Brazilian performer to appear nude on stage. Since then, her writing has burned with a fire all its own. In 2011, at the age of 36, she won the José Saramago Prize for Os Malaquias [The Malaquias Family] (first published in Portugal in 2012), a sweeping family saga. In 2013 came As Miniaturas [The Miniatures], a poetic and delicate narrative that explores the subtle boundary between reality and dream — where the everyday interlaces with the oneiric, challenging the conventions of existence. Years later, in 2021, she unsettled readers with A Pediatra [The Paediatrician], a sharp portrait of a paediatrician who rejects emotional ties and questions the rituals of modern motherhood — a novel whose rights have already been sold for film and theatre adaptations.In addition to novels, she has published short story collections — Minto enquanto posso [I Lie While I Can], Nego tudo [I Deny Everything], and Engano seu [You're Mistaken] — as well as anthologies, columns, and young adult fiction, including Sociedade da Caveira de Cristal [Crystal Skull Society], Quase caio [Almost Fell], and Irmãs de pelúcia [Plush Sisters]. She also received the Literature for All Award from Brazil’s Ministry of Education for her novella Sofia, o cobrador e o motorista [Sofia, the Conductor and the Driver]. Her work has been translated and published in several countries, including Germany, Italy, France, Israel, Romania, Sweden, Kuwait, and Argentina.Reading Andréa del Fuego is to step beyond the familiar contours of language — into a realm where the unexpected casts new light on reality.
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To hear Andréa del Fuego read an excerpt on Estremoz, Vila Viçosa and Marvão, from the chapter “The vast and burning lands of Alentejo” from José Saramago's book, Journey to Portugal.
By Saramago
Journey To Portugal
The vast and burning lands of Alentejo
A Rose Flower
(...)
Marvão can be seen from Castelo de Vide, but you can see anywhere from Marvão. The traveller's exaggerating, yet this is precisely the impression he had before ever coming there, while crossing the plain when suddenly there rears nearer than ever a tall and near-vertical promontory. At over eight hundred metres high, Marvão reminds you of one of those Greek monasteries on Mount Athos which you could only reach by putting yourself into a basket and being pulled up to the top by a rope, the abyss at your feet. Nobody has to undertake such an adventure. The road strains on its way to the summit, curve after curve of a wide arc circling the mountain, but at last the traveller can set foot on the ground and take stock of his triumph. All the same, if one is a lover of justice, before going into ecstasy over the wide vistas spread before him, he should recall those two lines of trees bordering a stretch of the road for some two or three hundred metres immediately beyond Castelo de Vide: a lovely avenue of strong tall trunks, and if one day it's decided that they're a threat to high-speed traffic, that being a madness of our times, may God grant that we refrain from cutting them down, and may they move over the motorway instead. That way maybe members of some future generation will be able to come and ask questions concerning the reasons for two such straight and regular rows of trees. Thus, as you can see, the traveller is clearly clairvoyant: if there’s no answer to the human face at Salvador do Mundo at least here you can find one for the mystery of the unforeseen avenue.
It's the truth. From Marvão you can see virtually all the lands thereabouts: on one side Spain, with Valencia de Alcântara, São Vicente and Albuquerque, as well as a mass of little villages; to the south along the ravine separating the Serra de São Mamede and another, a spur of the former, the Serra da Ladeira da Gata, where you can pick out Cabeço de Vide, Sousel, Estremoz, Alter Pedroso, Crato, Benavila and Avis; to the west and northwest, Castelo de Vide, which the traveller visited only recently, together with Nisa, Póvoa and Meadas, Gáfete and Arez; and finally, to the north, where the air is limpid, to be able to see Castelo Branco, Alpedrinha, Monsanto quite clearly. You can understand why, here in a place like this, from the heights of the tower, in homage to Marvão castle, the traveller is bound to mutter respectfully: “How wide is the world”.»
(...)
The Destruction of Nests is Prohibited
The traveller came to know little more than the upper town in Estremoz where the old town and castle are enclosed. The roads within the city walls are narrow. From there on down the area opens out, less into a town than into a city. Estremoz stretches forth so far it almost loses sight of its origins while still encircling the celebrated Torre das Três Coroas [the Tower of Three Garlands] with its obvious attractions. Nowhere else has the traveller so strongly experienced the demarcation that can be made by city walls between those within and those without. Of course, the impression made can only be a personal one, thus subject to a caution which naturally the traveller lacks.
Whitewashed with chalk, employing marble as if it were an everyday stone, the houses in the upper city are of themselves reason enough to visit Estremoz. But on its summit is also the aforementioned tower, with its decorative balconied battlements, along with the remains of King Dinis' Palace and portals of twinned colonnades where the traveller discovered pictures of moon and of lambs. Here too is the eighteenth-century chapel to the saintly Queen Isabel, with its theatrical choir stalls and extravagantly ornamented tiles representing stages in the life of the miraculous lady who transformed bread into roses, since she was unable to transform roses into bread. Here too the Municipal Museum, which boasts much to see and little to forget.
The traveller ignores the pieces he knew he'd be able to find without too much trouble in other museums, in order to gaze at his leisure upon the clay dolls called after Estremoz. “Wonder at them”, says he, “wonder there's no happier name for it.” Hundreds of little figurines arranged with good taste and judgment and each one worthy of slow examination. The traveller doesn't know which way to turn: they're called popular pieces, showing scenes of rural labour or Christmas cribs fit for a house altar, toys of diverse inspiration; it's a world that cannot be catalogued item by item. One example must suffice: a single shop front uniting, in ordered confusion' “negroes on foot and horseback; an Amazon and riders; a parish priest on his horse; a shepherd and flock; a man eating crumbs while another man prepares a bread broth; sentries standing or sitting about in a garden; a mischievous lad out in the fields; an accordion player; emblems of spring with and without garlands; popular figures of chestnut-pickers, milkmaids, water-carriers; rustic maidens with their spinning wheels or guarding hens, ducks or flocks of sheep and goats; women washing, ironing, gazing at themselves in the mirror or taking tea; a fishwife; and three figurines engaged in killing the pig while the women make sausages from the pork”. Oh, how magical! he says over and over again. You'll go to Estremoz, you'll see its little dolls and you'll save your soul. That's a saying invented by the traveller to bequeath to posterity.
He could well have remained there, but it was impossible. Having contemplated the endlessly rolling landscape he could glimpse here and there, he goes down into the lowlands, another way of saying that he went to Rossio where, just outside, there stands the church dedicated to St Francis. Here also is the monastery where King Pedro I died, leaving his heart to the monks. If it's true the brothers inherited this gift, when the Day of Resurrection occurs in Alcobaça, Pedro will no longer have a heart to bestow upon his Inés.
(…)
On the way to Vila Viçosa and on either side of the main road, the traveller encounters an abundance of marble flowerpots. These earthly bones still bear traces of the flesh-coloured mud which once coated them. And, speaking of old bones, the traveller observes how to his right and along the far horizon rear the heights of the Serra de Ossa, meaning bear, and not the feminine of bone, which doesn't have a feminine form. As you can deduce from the visual evidence, not everything is what it appears.
From Vila Viçosa, proceed to the Ducal Palace. The traveller isn't exempt from the obligation, which is also a matter of taste, but.he's loath to admit that these palaces always leave him in a condition approaching mental confusion. The plethora of objects, the wonderful alongside the mediocre, and successive rooms weary him as much here as in Sintra or Queluz. Or, without wishing to appear presumptuous, in Versailles. All in all, it's unjust that Paço de Vila Viçosa merits as attentive a visit as their timetable allows, obviously devised by the guides there. It's not always the object of interest they note that the traveller is likely to most appreciate, but its selection in all probability follows an owner of uncertain taste intended to please everybody. In any case, unanimity of choice is guaranteed for the rooms named after the Virtues, the Duchesses or Hercules while in the north wing, in the rooms dedicated to the Queen and to David, there's particular distinction given the plaza lined with Talavera tiles like the Duchesses' room. Equally magnificent are the chests in the Dukes' Room, and the oratory of the Duchess Catalina is also extremely beautiful, its ceiling painted with themes drawn from decorations at Pompeii. There's no lack of painting in the Vila Viçosa, much of it done by contemporary Portuguese artists, and more by some good sixteenth-century copyists, most notably Van der Goes' “Descent from the Cross”. If the traveller should venture into the kitchen, he'd be taken by surprise by the variety and quantity of copper utensils there. If he visited the weaponry, armour and trappings, if he didn't fail to see the stage-coach belonging to João V, it's because it all has to be seen in order the better to understand the lives of the dukes and their servants, despite the fact that where these are concerned, they didn't add much to a tour of the palace.
Once outside, the traveller takes a turn around the equestrian statue of Dom João IV. He finds it very similar to the one in Lisbon of Dom Joäo I, which neither devalues the former nor enhances the value of the latter. To lift the weight of these concerns from his heart the traveller goes to the old town, possessing a beauty particular to ancient Alentejo communities. Before climbing the road to the castle, neglected by the numerous tourists, he goes into the church of Our Lady of the Conception, covered from top to bottom in polychrome tiles, yet another illustration of how far we've gone towards losing our taste for this splendid material or perhaps how far we've gone in adulterating it as a modern utility.
The traveller admires the justice inherent in the image of the female patron saint whom João, without taking account of any divine preferences, crowned and proclaimed patron saint of Portugal, and then went on to other tiles, of Policarpo de Oliveira Bernardes, a fully accomplished artist. As has been noted many times previously, highly attentive as the traveller is to everyday minutiae, even without disregarding rare and important matters, it's not so strange, he finds, that ears of corn and oil should be embedded in the substantial arches supporting the entrance, and again on the impressive collection boxes, one of which, older in its design and lettering, is intended for the Papal Bull for the Crusaders, while the other, for the patron saint of the church, is as theatrical as any Baroque screen. To either side of the central nave, leaning against the columns, they are in a position to solicit a believer's generosity. Whoever enters the parish church of Vila Viçosa with money, oil or corn to spare, must have the hardest of hearts if he's not moved to part with them.
The castle of Vila Viçosa, by which the traveller means the New Castle, a sixteenth-century edifice built according to the instructions of Duke Jaime, is first and foremost a fortress. Everything in it is subordinated to a military function. A fortification of this kind, with walls which in places are as much as four or six metres thick, was conceived with an eye to great and lengthy blockades. Its dry moat, powerful cylindrical towers, each of them extended to cover two sides of the quadrangle, its wide interior ramps to facilitate troop movements, involving the defensive artillery and no doubt including their draught animals, allowed the traveller to inhale, in a manner he has only rarely encountered, and from then on never again as intensely as upon this occasion, the atmosphere of war and the smell of gunpowder, despite the total absence of the instruments of war. Inside the castle walls sits the dukes' citadel with some fine paintings, and within it you can see situated, and well situated, let it be said, the Archaeological Museum and the Archive of the House of Braganza, a pile of enormously rich documentation still awaiting Proper exploitation. The traveller saw, with flagging spirits, attached to a wall so all could see, the enlarged photograph of a document signed by Damião de Góis a few weeks before the Inquisition seized him. Flagging spirits is not perhaps the most apt description: let's call it melancholy, or another of those indefinable sensations, whatever is invoked by one's sensitivities in the face of the irremediable. It's as if the traveller, knowing that Damião de Góis was about to be imprisoned because dates and facts had advised him so, was obliged to set history to rights. Only he simply couldn't: in order to correct history it's always necessary to correct the future as well.
Traveller'sNotes
“Whether on foot or by vehicle, what comes to us at the pace of our steps, or the hum of an engine forms the frame of a larger story.”
Estremoz, Vila Viçosa and Marvão
“There Is Earth Within the Sun
We begin our walk in the Jardim Municipal de Estremoz [Estremoz Municipal Garden]. Ahead of us, a fountain sparkles in a pool of crystal-clear water, amplifying the already merciless rays of the sun — or, as José Saramago once wrote, a sun that hides nothing, for we stand “beneath the sun of frankness.” On the fountain, dating from 1852, an anonymous verse reads: “Time passes swiftly.” All around, a marble-topped sundial marks the wrong hour — as José Luís Peixoto once observed. And so began my steps in the Alentejo, learning to navigate a land that defies measurement. The sundial lacks enough hands to grasp a time larger than itself — the time of a land heavy with sun and labour. We enter the Centro Interpretativo do Boneco de Estremoz [Estremoz Clay Figure Interpretation Centre], a form of cultural expression inscribed on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list. Even the names draw me in. Here we meet barristas — clay artisans — as the centre describes them, creators of figurative art that uses clay as both sacred and profane medium. I crouch to get a closer look at the pieces. One in particular draws me in: Lanceiro a cavalo com bandeira [Lancer on horseback with flag] by the artist Liberdade da Conceição. The horse is smaller than its rider — a thought stirs in me, layered: there is something of a child’s struggle in the figure, and yet also the suggestion of a struggle that never ends, even in play.
As we walk through this world of Alentejan life shaped in clay, José Luís Peixoto introduces me to canto alentejano — the traditional polyphonic singing of the region — right there, in the heart of it. We hear a deep voice, all earth and sun, cooking me from the inside out, until I feel I might become a boneco myself — a figurine bearing witness to hardship. The song to the land declares: “calluses are the rings of a working man.” José tells me that this canto is also recognised as Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO. Later, we stop at the café A Cadeia Quinhentista. I watch as trays pass before me, each one presenting a different way of encountering the egg — that essential food, born of the sun. The sun again — always the sun — twisting, drying, demanding that no one pause along the path. Between pudins and pão-de-ló, it is the leite frito [fried milk] that floors me: a creamy cloud wrapped in a crisp shell, resting in a sauce of milk, egg yolks, and spices. One can forget the world through the mouth, I think as I taste it. One need only be tendered by leite frito.
To consider the journey complete only upon reaching the destination would be to diminish its meaning — as though the experience begins only when the body takes note. In truth, the path itself is the seed of the journey. Whether on foot or by vehicle, what comes to us at the pace of our steps, or the hum of an engine forms the frame of a larger story. Between Estremoz and Vila Viçosa, between one place and the next, I was introduced to the sobreiros — the cork oak trees whose generous trunks and wide canopies produce cork, the prized bark that Portugal has transformed into art and industry. The montado, says José Luís Peixoto, is not simply a natural environment — it is a centuries-old cultural landscape, shaped by human hands. A delicately balanced ecosystem that shelters pigs, cork oaks, and olive trees alike. The Alentejo is home to 33% of the world’s cork oaks and accounts for 21% of Portugal’s forested land. Today, cork is a rare and precious material. In the past, José tells me, it was so common that the loser of any trivial contest would be given a cork medal.
We arrive at the Paço Ducal in Vila Viçosa. It is astonishing. This palace, with its two hundred rooms, now houses the Fundação da Casa de Bragança [House of Braganza Foundation], established according to the will of Portugal’s last king, Manuel II. The 17th-century tapestries immediately draw the eye — the walls adorned with both paintings and textile works. Downstairs were the guards’ and servants’ quarters. Above them, the royal apartments. Construction began in 1501 and was only completed three centuries later. The portraits reflect the style of the time, depicting figures and landscapes in equal measure. In one of the salons, the ceiling is divided into eight painted virtues — images that may once have inspired noble thoughts in those seated on the carved, velvet-covered armchairs spread around the room.
We enter the royal private chambers. The first thing I notice are the beds — they are short. I am soon told that kings would sleep in a reclined position, propped up in bed after taking their final meal of the day. In the kitchen area, we see the copper pots — all engraved with “Casa de Bragança”. Enormous vessels once used for banquets that left kings and their guests reclining, content and heavy-lidded. I see countless cake moulds, shaped to produce sumptuous forms for puddings and desserts. But back to the bedrooms: the walls are dressed in living silks — sober tones balanced in perfect alchemy — warming the air in winter, cooling it in summer. A corridor runs behind the study and the private rooms: the king slept in one chamber, the queen in another. A king should never be lodged at the far ends of the corridor, I’m told, but always at its centre, where the rear passage is easily accessible. There is careful design and quiet surveillance in the private quarters. Whenever I visit a palace, it is these intimate spaces that draw me most powerfully into the past — not only where bodies once lived, but where thoughts once gathered. In the gardens of the Paço Ducal, the hay lifts and floats in the wind of a five o’clock afternoon. One peacock lets out a cry, as if to announce itself in other realms. Then come the smaller birds — they follow the peacock’s brilliance with gentler songs. Their song lifts into the air like the soft fluff of nearby plants, drifting with the breeze as passers-by walk through. The pollen appears almost tangible — so large, from where I stand near the old carriage house, it resembles communion wafers scattered in the wind.
We left the garden just in time to enter Florbela Espanca’s bedroom — a space whose intimacy is now known to us through some of the most poignant lyrical writing ever composed in the Portuguese language. The bedroom of one of the greatest writers of all time is small, sober. There are no silks, no great banquet pots, nor the quiet apparatus of royal surveillance — but another kind of nobility resides here, and other dangers too. It is often in the face of the unknowable that song reaches its most sublime expression. In Florbela’s biography, too, we glimpse the perils of simply existing — and of bearing the burden of a talent that poured the full force of Portuguese passion into words.
I take my leave of the Alentejo with one final destination: Marvão. The route to the village was once described with wonder by José Saramago: “how vast the world is,” he wrote upon reaching Marvão. I agree — and I would add this: how great is the person who sees the size of the world and recognises their own — smaller than the abyss that startles them, greater than a garden that has no legs to walk, as we do, we travellers. This was no ordinary journey through the Alentejo. I was guided by José Luís Peixoto, a remarkable alentejano, who led my gaze through his childhood and his legacy. These are different lenses — the kind that withstand the sun.”
Andréa del Fuego
What to visit
Tips fromEstremoz, Vila Viçosa and Marvão
In José Luís Peixoto's revisited journey, these are some of the places singled out by both his gaze and his writing.
Serra de São Mamede Natural Park
“In the Serra de São Mamede, May drifts by at its own unhurried pace. At this time of year, every step beneath the oaks and chestnut trees falls upon ancient earth, alive with whispered echoes. This silence is no absence — it is a living breath of the forest, damp and green, brushing gently over the moss. The stones lie nestled within this verdant world, quietly protected. Wild rosemary perfumes the air, its scent rising and drifting on the breeze. At times, the breeze turns cool, descending from the high slopes above. It carries stories — though it does not dare to speak them. And everything slows: the flight of birds, the light filtering through the leaves, the steady rhythm of a heartbeat climbing these slopes. The serra watches — vast and restrained. From the castle walls of Marvão, one sees this immense panorama stretching outwards. There, we grasp the scale of the mountain, and — made tiny by comparison — we measure ourselves against it. But it is here, deep within its folds, that we feel the true vertigo. There are moments when it seems we have merged with the Serra de São Mamede itself — as though we belong to the rustle of the shrubs, to the echo in the stone, to this solitude that welcomes rather than excludes.”
José Luís Peixoto
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The Best ofEstremoz e Vila Viçosa
Paço Ducal de Vila Viçosa
King Manuel II, the last King of Portugal, was an avid collector and cataloguer of books — especially first editions of the epic poem Os Lusíadas — many of which are now held at the Museum-Library of the Paço Ducal de Vila Viçosa. It was by his express wish, recorded in his will, that this national monument — located in the Terreiro do Paço of Vila Viçosa — was reopened following the establishment of the Fundação da Casa de Bragança. Dating from the 16th century, the Paço Ducal de Vila Viçosa was once a summer residence of King Carlos I and Queen Amélia. Today, it invites visitors to contemplate rich collections of painting, sculpture, furniture, tapestries, ceramics and silverware, displayed throughout the Andar Nobre (Noble Floor). Spaces such as the Dukes’ Hall, the historic Kitchen and the formal Gardens evoke the splendour and passions of Portugal’s monarchy.
Castelo de Marvão
At the highest point of the Serra de São Mamede, the medieval Castelo de Marvão and its imposing walls dominate the landscape, offering breathtaking panoramic views over the Alentejo. Wandering through the narrow lanes of the historic centre, past stone houses and viewpoints that open up at every turn, and climbing to the Torre de Menagem (Keep), is an invitation to travel back in time — and to feel a deep connection with the tranquillity and natural beauty of the interior. In summer, Marvão hosts an international classical music festival where culture reigns supreme.
Capela da Rainha Santa Isabel
Although the tomb of Queen Saint Isabel is located in the Mosteiro de Santa Clara-a-Nova [Monastery of Santa Clara-a-Nova] in Coimbra, this chapel is one of the sites of devotion and veneration dedicated to her memory, and holds an important place in the history of Estremoz. A remarkable example of medieval Alentejan architecture, it houses a collection of oil paintings and blue-and-white azulejo panels rich in historical and symbolic meaning. These artworks depict episodes from the queen’s life that led to her canonisation 400 years ago — including the famous Miracle of the Roses.
Galveias
Galveias, birthplace of José Luís Peixoto, is a village steeped in history and tradition. Rua José Luís Peixoto is named in tribute to the writer, while the Interpretation Centre built in his honour offers an immersive exploration of his work and his deep connection to his roots. One of Galveias’ most emblematic landmarks is the Fonte da Vila [Village Fountain], dating from the 19th century — a symbol of rural life and the vital role of water in the community over the centuries. With its simplicity and authenticity, Galveias is a place where past and present meet — a fusion also felt in the breeze from one of the two Baloiços de Portugal [Portugal’s Signature Swings] that can be found in the village.
Gastronomia do Alentejo
Alentejan cuisine is characterised by bold, authentic flavours. Açorda — a comforting dish made from bread, garlic, olive oil and coriander — is often served with fish or meat. Migas, made from bread, garlic and olive oil, are enriched with the region’s distinctive cured meats. Tomato soup, prepared with fresh tomatoes and olive oil, is another beloved staple. The region’s sweets are equally noteworthy for their variety and heritage: from sericaia with Elvas plums to pastel de castanha [chestnut pastry] from Marvão, from tiborna from Vila Viçosa — made with gila (fig-leaf gourd) and almonds — to the egg-rich gadanha from Estremoz, each treat is a stop on this flavourful journey through stories told in sugar, spice and memory.
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