Discover Minho - Portugal's best-kept secret

Minho is Portugal's greenest and most traditional province and also the country's best-kept secret. It is favoured by celebrities looking for peace and quiet. With its stately homes converted into smart bed and breakfast hotels, it is the ideal place for a romantic getaway.

What To Do

Minho is Portugal's best-kept secret. Bordered by the River Douro in the south and divided from Spain by the River Minho in the north, it is the country's greenest and most traditional province. The gardens are great places to break open all those books you meant to get round to. It is also home to some of Portugal's most important cities: Guimarães, first capital of Portugal and birthplace of Dom Afonso Henriques, the first king of Portugal, has a fairy-tale castle with a central keep reached by a high bridge; Braga has been the country's religious capital since Roman times (Minho is so devout that people queue on the pavement to hear Mass). 

The sea port of Viana do Castelo provided ships and seafarers for the Discoveries and is full of opulent houses in Manueline (a 16th-century style of Portuguese architecture using nautical themes), Renaissance and Baroque styles, built with the wealth of trade from the colonies. Ponte de Lima is an exquisitely preserved medieval village of whitewashed houses decorated with Manueline ropework and lies by the river spanned by an old Roman bridge. Portugal's oldest market, dating back to 1125, takes place every other Monday on the sandy left bank. In the north of Peneda-Gerês national park is 700 sq km of wild, dramatic scenery, home to rare wolves and golden eagles.