Opening up like a pop-up book from the Rio Douro at sunset, humble-yet-opulent Porto entices with its higgledy-piggledy medieval centre and charismatic locals.

Built in the early 17th century, as a fortress to defend the port of Funchal, the Saint James Fort is an urban fort of military architecture.

The cultural landscape of the Alto Douro combines the monumental Nature of the Douro River valley, which has steep slopes, poor and uneven soils, with the ancestral and continuous action of the Humankind, adjusting the space to the agricultural necessities of Mediterranean type that the region bears.

In 1992, UNESCO expanded the World Heritage categories and established the “Cultural Landscape” criteria. Sintra proved the first such Cultural Landscape in Europe receiving its classification in 1995.

Located in the Alentejo lowlands, at the confluence of three major hydrographic basins – Tagus, Sado and Guadiana and a millennial crossroads of commercial routes in the peninsula, Évora was, from ancient times, a prominent political and social centre boasting a two million year history.