About half way to the northern Alentejo’s provincial capital of Portalegre, we stopped off in Alter do Chao, a picturesque village with a central castle, nicely maintained gardens and the ubiquitous square with the usual cast of elderly characters sipping coffee at the local café. I managed to secure a vague walking tour map, and we zigzagged through the narrow alleys lined with whitewashed walls, and a singular quiet—even more pronounced on a Sunday morning. The town’s claim to fame arose in the mid 18th century when the King realized his dream of breeding a Portuguese thoroughbred horse, the Alter Real(Royal Alter).
The landscape remains hilly and studded with olive and cork groves until it rises more sharply into the old town(surrounded by the encroaching new one) of Portalegre. Crawling through the shudderingly narrow streets, we were fortunate to find parking(it being Sunday), and a close hotel room, from which we could hear fado wafting gently out of a nearby bar. For the rest the town was tightly shut, almost eerily quiet, but we did take in the Tapestry Museum, which pays homage to the heyday of economic power of the textile industry in Portalegre. The majority of the exhibit showed newer tapestries and some textile design, rather than the work that put its artistry on the map.
Although we’d intended to use Portalegre as a base, we found it underwhelming and so moved on across the surrounding mountains to visit the stunning town of Marvao. The lonely road winds through forested mountains, isolated hamlets, and finally up the steep slopes to the ridge on the granite mountain top that is the walled twelfth century town of Marvao. It has Roman origins, but its real claim to fame came during the medieval period, when the town was reclaimed by the Portuguese from the Moors. Today it seems more like a living museum—the castle walls completely seal in the narrow rows of whitewashed houses and small church, along with remains of the castle’s towers and keep. It affords sweeping views east into Spain and west towards the central mountains, Serra da Estrela.
From Marvao, we kept on until reaching nearby Castelo de Vide, another medieval town, although much more lived in, and with the additional curiosity of having a minute village within its castle walls, as well as the restored remains of a medieval synagogue, as it became a refuge for Spanish Jews from the horrors of the Inquisition. The small Jewish museum chronicles the many layers of deception that had to be undertaken by the Jews in their double roles as Christians(for the outer world) and Jews(for themselves) as they made tremendous efforts to keep both their culture and religion alive. One of the granite doorways still shows a carved mezuzah!
We found lodging in a family’s house, with a lovely room, access to a small, well-equipped kitchen, and a shady little garden. The owners were lovely, generous-spirited people who made our stay at the edge of the small town most enjoyable. We spent hours roaming the cobbled hillsides, castle, and main square which was in the midst of feverish preparations for an upcoming “medieval festival”. We found a couple of different cafes to sit and watch the world go by, and also took a walk up the mountain opposite the town, allegedly partially along old Roman ways to a small chapel, but as the signage was poor at best, we undoubtedly missed some of the other highlights. In fact, to even find the beginning of the walk, despite our best efforts, we had to flag down a briskly walking elderly man who appeared to be the only soul on the street in the early morning, and he advised us to forget the beginning point and instead led us to a shortcut—which we never would have found either, not without his help, at least—.
We drove a loop through the parched countryside, where bus-stops appear to outnumber inhabitants. Tiny hamlets appear like mirages in the desert, not a soul to be seen, shuttered up, some virtually abandoned. There are vestiges of train tracks, and even a beautifully tiled railway station of old, and everywhere, rows of olive trees, making cool green patterns across the landscape.
Evenings rolled in with a pleasant cool—especially since it was a hellish 40 degrees Celsius during our first day. The sky turned a deep dark blue flush with stars, the streets echoing our footsteps in the quiet. A lovely town with a true balance between centuries of old and the present.
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