Private Tour: Coimbra (City of Students) Santarém (Gothic City)

Visit the oldest university in Portugal is a World Heritage Site, high on a hill in the middle of the city.

It’s a big tourist draw and has hundreds of years of history to show off.

You could scale the 180 steps in the 16th-century tower at the highest point of the university for an awesome perspective of the city.

Also well worth your time is the Sala dos Capelos, the 17th-century ceremonial hall and you need to survey the magnificent ensemble on the Paço das Escolas courtyard.

Unruly students were locked up at the students’ prison, and you’ll begin the whole experience by crossing the Iron Gate, which was once the entrance to Coimbra’s medieval citadel.

Tou must visit Coimbra - On the high banks of the Mondego River, Coimbra is a city with the oldest university in the country.

The prestige of this school will hit you when you step onto the Paço das Escolas courtyard.

In this rich ensemble of buildings is one of the finest libraries you’ll ever set foot in.

The university is found precisely where Portugal’s first kings had taken up residence centuries before, and the city’s monasteries have tombs for these rulers.

For culture, you’ll learn about the tragic love affair between the medieval Prince Pedro I and the noblewoman Inês, while Coimbra has its own genre of fado music that also originated at the university.

Visit the best Baroque library - This esteemed Baroque library is on the Paço das Escolas, where Portugal’s earliest kings once lived.

It goes back to the 1720s and needs to be seen to be believed.

The library is composed of three vast salons, bounded by monumental doorways.

Each salon has tall lacquered and gilded shelves, and enormous study tables made with dark hardwood shipped over from Brazil.

There are more than 250,000 volumes here, dating from the 1500s to the 1700s and dealing with history, geography, medicine, law and science.

One of the curious things you’ll learn about the library is that it maintains a colony of bats bred to eat insects that would damage the books.

Lunch Portuguese food in Trovador - Coimbra

In a wonderful position opposite the majestic old cathedral, this restaurant sees many tourists but nevertheless offers up tasty regional dishes supplemented by daily specials. The walls are decorated with tiles, quotations and photos of old Coimbra, and the atmosphere is traditional. Regular fado performances.

Visit the university’s chapel is from the first decades of the 16th century and abounds with history and sumptuous fittings.

The main portal is Neoclassical and from the 18th century, but if you step across to the side entrance there are some extraordinary Manueline carvings.

The walls and ceiling of the choir are festooned with colourful 17th-century azulejos, manufactured in Lisbon but with a clear Dutch inspiration.

The altarpiece is held as a Mannerist masterpiece and has 16th-century paintings of the life of Christ.

Last up is the working organ, with a gleaming Baroque case and dating to 1733.

With a very atmospheric venue Coimbra’s episcopal palace, this fantastic Museum is named for the 18th and 19th-century sculptor, Joaquim Machado de Castro.

The building was constructed in phases from medieval times onwards, and is found at the same site as Coimbra’s Roman forum.

A vestige of this ancient history, the cryptoporticus (covered passageway) is preserved in the lower levels.

The museum’s art has been curated from regional churches and other defunct religious institutions.

You’ll browse the largest collection of sculpture in any Portuguese National Museum, as well as tapestries, ceramic altarpieces and a catalogue of paintings from the 15th to the 19th centuries.

Visit the Monastery of Santa Cruz - Rooted in the earliest years of the Portuguese monarchy, this monastery goes back to the 12th century.

The architecture though is later, with a 16th-century Manueline design summed up by the captivating decoration on the main portal, ceiling and cloister outside.

Later that same century the pulpit and gilded wooden stalls were added in a resplendent Renaissance style.

But the big story at the monastery has to be the tombs of Portugal’s first two kings, Afonso Henriques and Sancho I. They reigned in the 12th century and in the 1500s their remains were transferred to a marvellous Manueline ensemble sculpted by Nicolau Chanterene.

Visit the Old Cathedral of Coimbra - Back when Coimbra was a frontier between Christianity and Islam, King Afonso Henriques established this Romanesque cathedral.

It was built not long after his victory over the Moors at the Battle of Ourique in 1139, and unlike other churches of its day has kept a lot of its Romanesque character.

You’ll know that you’re at a boundary between worlds when you approach the austere facade, which is capped with crenellations and has only slender openings in its wall.

Inside, the primitive barrel vault hints at the great age of the cathedral, and the column capitals have wonderful foliate, geometric and bestial designs.

Lovers of medieval art will have 380 of these masterful capitals to inspect!