Obidos

You can walk the ramparts that loop the whole village, looking down onto roofs and lanes inside. There is no railing and the walkway fits a single body, so on windy days or with children people keep to a short stretch.

The main gate, whose bent passage is lined on walls and vault with eighteenth century blue tiles. The passage carries sound well, so buskers with guitars often claim the spot.

Here in 1441 the ten year old Afonso V married his cousin, and the interior walls are clad in seventeenth century tiles. An altarpiece by Josefa de Obidos, a woman painter who worked in the village, hangs inside.

A former church turned bookshop, with shelves rising right up to where the altar stood. Obidos became a UNESCO City of Literature in 2015, and bookshops like this are scattered through the walled village.

The stronghold anchoring the walls at their northern corner, its inner palace now occupied by a pousada hotel. Non guests may enter the courtyard and no further, and the rampart walk peaks in height right beside it.

An aqueduct built in the sixteenth century by Queen Catherine to bring water to the village, striding across the fields until it meets the walls. The arches beside the car park are the tallest, so most photos are taken there.

A wide lagoon held back from the Atlantic by a sandbar, shallow enough that kayak and windsurf learners gather on it. The surf at Foz do Arelho on the ocean side runs strong, so swimmers stay on the lagoon side.

An eighteenth century Baroque church standing alone in the fields outside the walls, laid out as a hexagon. The two bell towers flanking the front were never finished and stop at roof height, and the altar holds an old crucifix carved in stone.

Every morning farmers lay out fruit and vegetables on the main square of this spa town 10km to the north. Around its edge stand shops selling the town's cabbage leaf pottery.

Rock islands reached by boat from Peniche harbour, where a seventeenth century fort perches on a rock reached by a stone causeway over the sea. Daily visitor numbers are capped, so in summer the boat tickets sell out early.

An old fort sealing a headland, where the dictatorship jailed political prisoners from 1934 to 1974. Communist leader Alvaro Cunhal and comrades escaped in 1960. As the National Museum of Resistance and Freedom, it now shows the cells and visiting room.

A small former island north of Peniche, now tethered to Portugal proper by a sand bar, its white houses huddled on the rock. A beach lies on each side of the bar, so with any wind one side has waves and the other lies flat. Surf schools line up for beginners.

A 19th-century park by the thermal hospital of Caldas da Rainha, north of Obidos, with boats to row on its pond. Caldas da Rainha translates as queen's hot springs, for the hospital Queen Leonor set up in the 1480s. Its Jose Malhoa museum shows modern art.

Businessman Joe Berardo laid out this Eastern-style garden in the Bombarral vineyards after the Taliban wrecked the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001. A golden Buddha, terracotta warrior copies and pagodas dot the hills. It takes hours on foot; a little train helps.