Climb uphill from Largo de São Vicente and you’ll soon set foot inside the astonishingly well-preserved 12th-century citadel. People still live in its narrow, atmospheric lanes, unspoilt by the few, low-key handicrafts shops and cafes that have crept in.
Within the ruggedly ramparted walls is the original castle – built by Sancho I in 1187 and beefed up in the 15th century by João I, then heavily restored in the 1930s. The stout Torre de Menagem was garrisoned up until the early 20th century. It now houses a Museu Militar , whose four floors are filled with swords, guns and suits of armour spanning several centuries, from medieval times to WWI and the Salazar dictatorship’s colonial exploits. The price of admission is well worth the chance to climb to the top of the crenellated tower, with great views all around. In front of the torre is an extraordinary, primitive pelourinho (stone pillory) atop a granite boar similar to the berrões found around the province.
Squatting at the rear of the citadel is an odd pentagonal building known as the Domus Municipalis , the oldest town hall in Portugal – although its precise age is a matter of scholarly disagreement – and one of the few examples of civil Romanesque architecture on the Iberian Peninsula. Bragança’s medieval town council once met upstairs in an arcaded room studded with weathered faces of man and beast and scratched with symbols of the stonemasons.
Beside the Domus Municipalis is the early-16th-century Igreja de Santa Maria . Of particular interest are its brick Mudéjar columns, vividly painted ceiling, and a 17th-century Santa Maria Madalena at the high altar, with her traditional long hair and ragged garb.
