Sesimbra, town of the sea

You are at the Fortaleza de Santiago, the Santiago Fortress, right on the sand. Turn to face the sea: on your left is Praia da Califórnia, on your right Praia do Ouro, and way out at the end, closing the bay, the tip of the Forte do Cavalo, where this walk ends.

Before this fortress, the coast was guarded with lookouts and fire. Up at the castle, and in the round tower of the Atalaia, west of the bay, they lit beacons, warning fires. When the fire went up, everyone understood: there were Moors on the coast. That is where the Portuguese saying comes from, the one used to this day to mean "watch out". Down here on the beach there was only a wall and a small fort, never enough against the pirates and corsairs.

After the Restoration of 1640, at war with Castile, King João the Fourth needed to defend the whole coast. This fortress went up in about six years, between 1642 and 1649. It was designed by a Flemish Jesuit, Joannes Cieremans, known in Portugal as João Pascácio Cosmander. He died in 1648, without seeing it finished.

Now notice something unusual: there is no moat and no wall separating it from the town. The fortress has two faces. On the sea side it is military, with two bastions facing the water and the guns pointing at the bay. On the town side it looks almost like a palace: the coat of arms above the gate, large windows, balconies. It was designed that way so as not to frighten the people it was protecting.

In the eighteenth century, the Meninos de Palhavã, the illegitimate sons of King João the Fifth, came here for the bathing season. Two centuries later the fortress filled with children again: the Guarda Fiscal, the customs police, based here with the customs house since 1874, brought the guards' children every summer for a holiday camp, with the beach on the doorstep.

The rest of the story is inside. Since 2016 the fortress has been the Sesimbra Maritime Museum, made with the help of local people, and admission is free. Don't miss the 3D film that runs from Pangaea to the present day, or the room of the Fisher King, Carlos de Bragança, and the oceanographic campaigns he led off Sesimbra. Inside there is also the Tourist Office and a bar. It is closed on Mondays and, in summer, only opens in the afternoon.

Now follow the seafront to the Monumento ao Pescador, the Fisherman's Monument, a little over a minute away on foot.

You are standing before the Monumento aos Pescadores, the Fishermen's Monument, a bronze bas-relief.

Read what it says below: «To the fishermen, to whom the sea bows and the land acclaims».

Notice the figures: a fisherman in a cap, standing, a woman sitting, and a line of men carrying a pole on their shoulders.

It is a place of living memory: when someone from the town dies, flowers are sometimes left here.

Now walk a few steps to the Largo de Bombaldes, where the walls have colour.

You are in the Largo de Bombaldes. Before you look at the walls, look at the ground: there are two layers of history here.

Between May and October 2007, excavations uncovered Roman remains: four fish-salting tanks, called cetárias, lined with a mortar of lime and sand, and in one of them traces of garum, a fermented fish sauce the Romans loved. Almost two thousand years ago, people were already fishing and salting fish in this bay.

So when you eat a grilled sardine in a restaurant here, you are carrying on a tradition twenty centuries old.

Slow down. You are in Sesimbra's historic centre, and here the houses talk. In 2014, the town council challenged a group of artists to paint the doors and windows of the old centre. More than a dozen took part in the first phase, and the project went on for four more editions and spread to fences and walls.

The inspiration comes from fishing and fish traditions. One of the doors, "We Love Fish", by Salomé Afonso, once appeared on an international website as one of the most beautiful in the world.

This is a good place for a game with kids: how many painted doors can you find in five minutes? Each one has a different story.

If you meet locals, a friendly "good morning" works wonders: many like to explain who painted their door and why.

When you are ready to go on, head for the Mercado Municipal, right next door.

You are at the door of the Mercado Municipal, between Avenida da Liberdade and Largo de Bombaldes. And this place used to smell of something else: here stood the Lusitana, one of Sesimbra's fish canneries.

Picture the town between the First World War and the end of the nineteen twenties: twelve factories at work, with more than a thousand men and women cleaning, cooking and canning fish. The Bela Vista factory won a gold medal at the International Exhibition in Rio de Janeiro, in 1923. The last to close, A Primorosa, shut its doors in 1961.

Today the market opens Tuesday to Sunday, from seven in the morning to two in the afternoon, and entry is free. Go in, if it is morning: sargo bream, sea bass, octopus, black scabbardfish, fruit and vegetables from the region, wood-oven bread and the famous Azóia cheese. Sesimbra's fish is famous because even today much of it is caught on handlines and hooks by the local fleet.

Now walk to the Largo do Município, where the Pelourinho stands, a few minutes away on foot.

You are in the Largo do Município, in front of the Pelourinho, the pillory column. It looks like just a column on a few steps, but in Portugal these columns were the symbol of a town's power: of its justice and its autonomy.

What you see is a reconstruction from 1988, made in the image of the original, which stood on exactly this spot. Some fragments of the original are kept in the town hall, in this same square.

Notice the shape: a platform of three steps, a small base, the column and a plain capital. No decoration: what mattered was what it represented.

Now walk on to the Igreja da Misericórdia, a few minutes away.

This is the Igreja da Misericórdia, a small church from the sixteenth century, given this curved-gable front in the nineteenth. It is where Sesimbra's best-loved image is kept: the Senhor Jesus das Chagas.

Tradition says that in 1534 this image of Christ appeared on the beach, beside the Pedra Alta, the High Rock, a rock the sea never quite covers. The fishermen adopted it as their own, and the devotion has never stopped: it is one of the oldest linked to the sea in Portugal.

Every year, on 4 May, the image leaves here and joins the procession that sets out from the Matriz. It is the fishermen's festival, asking for protection for those who go to sea.

If the door is open, take a look. Take a moment to notice the silence, so different from the bustle of the seafront.

Now let's see where those same sea people looked after their own. Go on to the Capela do Espírito Santo dos Mareantes, in Rua Cândido dos Reis.

In front of you is the Capela do Espírito Santo dos Mareantes, the Chapel of the Holy Spirit of the Seafarers. At the end of the fifteenth century, as the town was already moving down from the castle to the beach, the brotherhood of fishermen and seafarers founded a chapel and a hospital here, the Spital, to care for their sick and help the poorest. You are at the heart of the old Póvoa da Ribeira, the fishermen's town: notice how the building stands out from the houses around it.

And there is a rare detail: the building still belongs to the same institution. Since 1858 it has been called the Associação de Socorros Mútuos Marítima e Terrestre de Sesimbra, a mutual aid society, but it is the brotherhood of more than five hundred years ago. The 1755 earthquake left everything in ruins, and only the chapel was rebuilt, with this baroque façade.

Since 2004 it has been part of the Municipal Museum, and it is well worth the one-euro ticket. Upstairs, in the old chapel, is the most valuable piece: a Nossa Senhora da Misericórdia, Our Lady of Mercy, attributed to Gregório Lopes, from the sixteenth century. Downstairs, in the medieval hospital, look for the drawings of boats scratched into the walls between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries by people who stayed there. It is closed on Mondays.

As you leave, climb to the square of the Igreja Matriz. It is the last climb of this walk.

You are in the square of the Igreja Matriz de Santiago, the parish mother church. The first parish church of Sesimbra was founded in 1160, next to the castle wall. This one, the new mother church, began to go up in 1534, on the initiative of Dom Jaime de Lencastre, and opened for worship in 1536: only two years of building.

Notice the bell tower: it keeps its original design. Inside there are three naves, seventeenth-century tiles and altars of gilded woodcarving. At the side door, notice the anchor: a reminder that this is a town of people of the sea.

From here, on 4 May, at five in the afternoon, the procession of the Senhor Jesus das Chagas, Lord Jesus of the Wounds, sets out: it is Sesimbra's biggest festival. And notice the coincidence of dates: 1534 is also the year tradition gives to the image you saw at the Misericórdia.

Now go down to Praia do Ouro, to the pontão, the jetty, where the story of a frigate awaits you.

You have reached the jetty at Praia do Ouro. Look at the rocks offshore: that is where the skeleton of a Spanish warship was left, the frigate Numancia.

She was no ordinary ship. She was the first ironclad, an armoured warship, to sail round the globe, between 1865 and 1867, and one of the first with electric light on board. In December 1916, old and sold for scrap, she was being towed to Bilbao when a storm threw her against these rocks.

There were 32 men on board. The fishermen and lifeboat crews of Sesimbra, led by the arrais, the skipper, Justino da Silva, known as "Estino", saved every one of them, without losing anyone. Three crew members stayed on here and became known as the "Numantines of Portugal".

Look for the plaque beside the jetty: it is the frigate's memorial, unveiled on 1 July 2021 and donated by the Spanish sea rescue society. In a fishing town, saving someone at sea is not heroism, it is duty.

Now follow the promenade, westward, to the Porto de Abrigo, the sheltered harbour.

You are at Sesimbra's Porto de Abrigo. First notice the colours: the little wooden boats with high bows are called aiolas, and every family paints its own in its own way, with the name on the bow. They are used for fishing cuttlefish, squid and octopus close to the coast.

Sesimbra is one of the most important fishing ports in the country. In the morning the fish is sold at auction at the lota, in the Doca de Pesca, the fishing dock, and leaves from there for the rest of the country. Sesimbra has a name for some of the best fish because much of it is caught on a line, one by one.

It was also here that, on 30 October 1954, Manuel Frade landed a swordfish weighing 153 kilos. In the fifties and sixties, Sesimbra became Europe's leading port for big-game sport fishing.

Follow the breakwater to the end, where you will find the lighthouse and a good view of Sesimbra.

Look up. The Forte de São Teodósio, which everyone here calls the Forte do Cavalo, was built between 1648 and 1652, also on the orders of King João the Fourth, and takes its name from the crown prince, Dom Teodósio. The popular name comes from the Cavalo beach and stream. It was a small piece in a system of several linked structures, crossing fire with the Fortaleza de Santiago, where you began. Inside, sheltered by the wall, stands something much older: the round tower of the medieval Atalaia, the lookout where beacons were lit when there were Moors on the coast.

The 1755 earthquake left it in ruins. It was restored, lived through the French Invasions and the Liberal civil war, and in 1895 it was adapted to hold the lighthouse that still flashes to the boats today. Since then it has been under the Navy.

Now turn to the open sea, to the south and west. The coast you see fading into the horizon is the wild coast: limestone cliffs, beaches with no road, caves and clear water all the way to Cape Espichel. It is not easy to reach on foot. You get there by sea.

And that is what we suggest at the next stop. Walk back along the breakwater to the quay where the boat trips leave.

You have reached the end of "Sesimbra, town of the sea". Thank you for walking with us.

If the wild coast stayed in your mind, from this quay boat trips leave for the caves and beaches with no access by land. Our boat-trip partner has a glass-bottom boat, and on board you can listen to the free audio tour "Caves and wild beaches" in this same app. Book at the link below.

If you would rather go underwater, our diving partner runs introductory dives here in the harbour. And if you want to see the hills and Cape Espichel without walking, our jeep partner takes you along the Arrábida trails.

Safe travels, and come back soon.