Three days in the
Douro Region

The starting point.
The starting point. Torga's native land. The hills and the mountains. The terraces on the slopes. His places. Body and soul rooted in this earth. His base and stronghold. Here in São Martinho de Anta, guarantees the poet, men are capable of absolutely everything. The writer's village, where he was born and where he wanted to be buried in a shallow, discreet, granite grave, with a piece of heather. Where it all begins and where it all ends. Best discovered on a three-day tour or over a long weekend. When you want, how you want, for as long as you want.

All kinds of tours are possible in this village that has turned into a town, which stretches out and embraces the Trás-os-Montes landscapes. Espaço Miguel Torga, designed by the architect Souto de Moura, is a cultural facility designed to exhibit and disclose the writer's history. Torga's life and work in words, in works, in photographs. Right next door, a two-minute walk away, the door to Casa Miguel Torga is open for you to explore its nooks and crannies. The armchair in which he sat and wrote, the fireplace, the hunting weapons, the beret. His cradle and his floor, the family home with rooms reminscent of environments from another age.

Open air, the sky, the smell of the earth, the landscape capturing the colours of time, stone, granite. Passos de Torga is a trail that traces the poet´s pathways. It begins at Casa Miguel Torga and ends in Eirô, in the centre of São Martinho de Anta, where a black man, a friend and confidant of the poet, used to live, the tree that watched over his footsteps ever since he was a child. All that´s left today are its roots and the poem he dedicated to it. The trail is an 11-kilometre circular walk in the midst of nature, herbs, bushes, wild carnations, holm oaks, gorse, white broom. Nature in its purest form.

The primary school with windows overlooking the Marão hills where, years later, the poet spent an afternoon replanting mimosa trees from his childhood. A five-minute drive away is another old school whose building is now the Pólo Arqueológico da Garganta, a piece of equipment that preserves and promotes a unique heritage, a meeting place for History, the Douro, the Trás-os-Montes mountains.

High up in the hills, with the Marão and Alvão hills in sight, is Senhora da Azinheira, chapel, the bell that tolls, the scent of rosemary, the August 15th pilgrimage, the boulders used as lunch tables for a day. The simple 17th century white chapel, with its baroque altarpiece and gilded carvings.

On the way to Sabrosa, a 20-minute drive away, is Casa Aires Torres. The life and work of Aires Torres, poet, actor, soldier and revolutionary. The permanent exhibition room features biographical panels, personal effects and part of his library. A minute's walk away lies the 18th century baroque-style Sabrosa Church, built on the site of the old chapel belonging to Casa de Fernão Magalhães or Casa da Pereira, mentioned in the will drawn up by the navigator before he set off to sail around the world. The house is an eight-minute walk from the church and the navigator is believed to have been born there. The coat of arms, a heraldic representation of the Magalhães, was sculpted on the orders of by King Manuel I to commemorate the fearless navigator´s epic voyage. This first round-the-world voyage, through seas never sailed before, is illustrated in The Sites and Cultures of Magalhães’ Voyage exhibition, at BB King Park, in Sabrosa, which allows you to experience and live through the odyssey and get to know distant lands.