A Month of Portugal...Monsanto, the Most Portuguese Village in the World, Pt. 1

I’d heard of Monsanto eons ago, as probably most Portuguese peeps have. I had this vague image of it as a village high up in the mountains, very typical of the area, and very typical in general of Portugal.

Monsanto

I might have even looked it up once upon a time in one of my books about Portugal. One of those “maybe someday I’ll visit”, but meanwhile I’m not making any real concrete plans.

So imagine my surprise when - while visiting my family in Tábua - my uncle informs me that we’d all be visiting the village of Monsanto during my stay. This was doubly surprising as it’s actually quite a ways from Tábua. About a 3 hour car ride in fact.

I quickly googled it to see what I was getting myself into and soon realized that I was in for quite a treat.

The drive over was a pain in the you know where. Lots of winding roads, lots of “crap, we can’t possibly fit our modern car through this tiny medieval gateway”, lots of vertigo-inducing stops and starts. But in the end, it was all worth it.

Monsanto is a very unique place and has been deemed “The Most Portuguese Village of Portugal”. There was a competition back in 1938, sponsored by the Estado Novo, the fascist dictatorship that governed Portugal from 1933 to 1974, to determine which village best exemplified what it was to be Portuguese. They won a shiny gold cockerel figure for their trouble, a replica of which is currently atop their main church.

Shiny Cockerel atop the Church Tower

There are, I'm sure, many reasons why it managed to garner this most auspicious award, but this is the real reason why most people have heard of it.

The rocks.

The massive, gigantous granite boulders that are its' calling card.

They are spread throughout the hamlet, balanced precariously between shops and homes. Some of them have actually been turned into dwellings, though most are now more of a curiosity than an actual living space.

Once someone's home, now a small little cafe.

And dear reader, let me tell you, they're as damn fantastic as you'd think from the picture above. Claustraphobic and scary and awesome, they're very much worth the massively steep drive to them.

Monsanto is positively overflowing with lovely and whimsical homes, a few shops, cafes, restaurants, B&Bs, everything a visitor might desire.

Most of the houses are constructed from the same granite that the boulders are made of.

And for such a small place, it's been the home of quite a few famous Portuguese peeps, like the doctor/writer Fernando Namora and the folk singer Zeca Afonso, who penned the Carnation Revolution's anthem, Grãndola, Vila Morena. I did try and find his home but was befuddled by the signs and after a few labyrinthine walks, forlornly gave up in order to save my calf muscles.

Steep streets make for weary legs 😉

Fernando Namora's Home

Loveliness personified.

                              

And as if all of this wasn't enough, there's also a castle!
And a necropolis!
But that'll have to wait until Pt. 2. 😊