Coimbra

About Coimbra

Coimbra rests on the hillside sloping down to the Mondego River, with the University — a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2013 — as the city's gravitational center for nearly eight centuries. This is no frozen postcard: the University is still very much active, and it shows in the streets of the Baixa, where students in black capes weave between fado taverns and centuries-old bookshops. The Paço das Escolas, a former royal palace turned campus, brings together the Sala dos Capelos, the Capela de São Miguel and, above all, the Biblioteca Joanina, an 18th-century Baroque library with gilded shelving and a colony of bats that protects the old books from insects at night (staff cover the furniture with leather every evening to shield it). From the Torre da Universidade, with its clock and bell nicknamed "a cabra" (the goat), the whole city and the Mondego valley unfold below. Heading down toward the river, the Sé Velha — one of Portugal's best-preserved Romanesque cathedrals, dating to the 12th century — stands in contrast to the Sé Nova, with its 17th-century Jesuit Baroque facade. Across the bridge, the Mosteiro de Santa Cruz holds the tombs of Portugal's first kings, and the Jardim Botânico, founded in 1772, offers a green breather with over 1,200 species. For families, Portugal dos Pequenitos recreates in miniature the monuments of Portugal and its former colonies, a beloved classic since 1940. Coimbra also has its own style of fado, slower and more academic than Lisbon's, traditionally sung standing by men in capes, and its biggest festival: May's Queima das Fitas, when graduating students symbolically burn their faculty ribbons during a week of concerts, serenades and parades that takes over the whole city. Coimbra is easy to see in two or three days, blending university, river and the pulse of a college town that hasn't stopped beating in 700 years.