11 Best Sights in Northern Portugal, Portugal

An exceptional baroque mansion believed to have been designed by Nicolau Nasoni (architect of Porto's dashing Clérigos Tower), the Casa de Mateus sits 4 km (2½ miles) east of Vila Real. Its U-shape facade—with high, decorated finials at each corner—is pictured on the Mateus Rosé wine label (though that is the full extent of the association, as the winemaker is not based here). After your guided tour of the house, you are free to explore the formal gardens, which are enhanced by a "tunnel" of cypress trees that shade the path. A longer version of the tour also takes in the chapel, with its even more extravagant facade, and a temporary exhibition.

Within the walls of the Cidadela, you'll find the Castelo and the Domus Municipalis (City Hall), a rare Romanesque civic building dating to the 12th century; it is always open. The nearby Igreja de Santa Maria, a church with Romanesque origins, has a superb 18th-century painted ceiling. A prehistoric granite boar, with a tall medieval stone pillory sprouting from its back, stands below the castle keep, or Torre de Menagem, which now houses the Museu Militar (€3). It displays armaments from the 12th century through World War I, but the structure itself is the main attraction, with its 108-foot-high Gothic tower, dungeons, drawbridge, turrets, battlements, and vertiginous outside staircase.

Plans for an underground car park in front of the city's courthouse were canceled in 2006 when remains of the long-lost Roman baths, dating back to the 1st century AD, came to light—steam still rising from the hot spring. The therapeutic complex is one of the largest unearthed in Europe, with two large pools and seven smaller ones, and a hydraulic system that still works today. The museum opened in 2021.

This late-17th-century church next door to the Torre de Menagem is lined with huge panels of blue-and-white azulejos depicting scenes from the New Testament.

Outside the walls of the Citadel is this Renaissance-era church, with a fine Mudejar (Moorish-style) vaulted ceiling in the chancel, and a gilded retable. Founded in the 16th century to serve the attached monastery, it has some 18th-century additions, such as the nave's impressive trompe l'oeil ceiling. The church is usually open from around 5 pm for a couple of hours.

The finest baroque work in Vila Real, this curious fan-shape building is also known as the Capela Nova (New Chapel). Its facade is dominated by two pairs of heavy columns. Built in the 18th century and dedicated to Saint Peter, it's believed by some to have been designed by Nicolau Nasoni, architect of Porto's emblematic Torre dos Clérigos.

Chaves-born Nadir Afonso (1920–2013) worked as an architect with the likes of Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer, and also made waves as a painter. Many of his most important works are on display at this sleek museum, designed by his still more famous compatriot, Álvaro Siza Vieira.

Housed in a former bishop's palace, the Museu do Abade de Baçal is named after Francisco Manuel Alves (1865–1948), a local abbot with a deep interest in the region's history and art, who contributed to the museum's creation. Its collections includes archaeological discoveries such as boar-shaped fertility symbols, tombstones with pinwheel patterns, and ancient coins.

If you can't make your visit to the region coincide with one of the festivals in which local lads wearing wooden masks roam the streets, the Museu Ibérico da Máscara e do Traje is definitely worth a visit. A joint Portuguese-Spanish initiative, it has displays on the celebrations in villages across Trás-os-Montes and across the border in Zamora. The many costumes on show are riotously colorful and the masks strikingly carved. Information in English is available.

These 185,000 acres of rolling hills are one of the most remote, least developed areas of the country. It's home to a growing population of Iberian wolves, which you're not likely to see except on a guided nature tour. In the villages that dot the park, some ancient traditions survive. Rio de Onor, right on the Spanish border, has traditional dwellings where livestock inhabit the ground floor and humans live one story up, warmed by the animals' body heat in cold winter months. The Montesinho Natural Park website has information on how to visit and stay in the area, but not on all hiking trails, so stop in at the Bragança tourist office for maps.

The city's most prominent landmark is this great, blunt, 14th-century castle keep overlooking the river. It houses the military collection of the Museu da Região Flaviense (Flaviense Regional Museum), where a hodgepodge of local archeological finds are presented in a free display at the neighboring city hall. The ramparts around the tower offer grand views of the town.