From Lisbon: Beira Interior Full Day Tour With Historic Villages

The day will start with the pick-up in your hotel or accommodation in Lisbon.

Next, we begin our tour visiting the old town of Ródão. It is a village in the center of the country, blessed by the beautiful Tagus river. Since early it established its influence as a means of subsistence and communication. Vila Velha de Ródão was even a strategic point of the demarcation of borders between Christian and Muslim and it ensured the Tagus navigation freedom.

After Vila Velha de Ródão we will go to Lagar de Varas. The building has two systems of extraction of olive oil: an older one with 2 sticks and granite sink and a mechine. The building is Municipal Interest Building, in schist and quartzite, as is typical in the region, featuring the mill and tools used in an olive oil press, including furnace room, bins, animal draw mill, stable, tasks, hydraulic mill.

Our tour goes to the city of Castelo Branco and its Castle also known locally as Castle of the Templars. It was a strategic Iberian castle and was part of the middle ages, called the Linha da Raia or Linha do Tejo. Severely damaged over the centuries, the castle of the Templars remains the most important historical-military record of the city.

Now is lunch time and we will taste delicious food in one of our favourite restaurants. This is already included in the price.

We continue the excursion to Jardim do Paço, in Castelo Branco, next to the old palace of the bishop. Created in the 18th century by Bishop João de Mendonça, it is organised in a formal pattern, but in its profusion of statues. Baroque in style and often bizarre, the saints and apostles line up in the hedges, the stone lions are reflected in the lakes.

We then visit the Fluvial Beach. Is a pool formed by a weir within the Parque de Penha Garcia, surrounded by strata with fossils about 480 million years old. It is an almost wild bathing area, crossed by the Pedestrian Route “Fossil Route”. (Possibility of baths in the summer).

We continue our Tour to Belmonte Castle, in the village and municipality of Belmonte, district of Castelo Branco, Portugal. In a dominant position on an elevation to the left bank of the river Zêzere, in the Serra da Estrela region, this medieval castle has its history linked to that of the Portuguese and Brazilian discoveries, since its Alcaides belonged to the navigator family Pedro Álvares Cabral.

We finished our tour by visiting the Jewish Museum of Belmonte. It is a museum that retraces the long history of the Jewish community in the region that resisted long years and centuries of religious persecution. The museum exposes more than a hundred religious, daily life and professional objects used by Hebrew families, especially in Beira Interior and Trás-os-Montes.

The tour is ending and now we will take you back to Lisbon full of memories!