Óbidos

The name comes from the Latin oppidum, a citadel, by way of the older Celtic Eburobricio. The Roman town of Eburobrittium, mentioned by Pliny the Elder, stood nearby at the edge of a lagoon that then gave access to the ocean; it was occupied from the 1st century BC to the 5th century AD and then abandoned for the more defensible hill where the castle stands. The Moors fortified the hilltop some time after 713, while a Christian Mozarab community lived in the Moncharro neighbourhood, and Afonso Henriques, the first king of Portugal, took the town in 1148, the last stage in the conquest of Estremadura.

Sancho I granted a charter in 1195, and in 1210 Afonso II gave the town to Queen Urraca. From then on Óbidos was often held by the queens of Portugal, who enriched it with donations until the 16th century, earning it the name Vila das Rainhas, the town of the queens. King Dinis remodelled the castle and walls, and the keep was added in the 14th century. In 1441 the Church of Santa Maria saw the wedding of Afonso V and Isabella of Coimbra, aged nine and ten. Manuel I granted a new charter and reorganised the town in 1513, and Queen Catherine of Austria had an aqueduct built to bring water to its fountains.

The earthquake of 1755 damaged the walls, several churches and many buildings, and the Peninsular War brought fighting nearby at Roliça. Restoration of the castle and walls began in 1932, and in 1948 the castle was converted into a pousada. In 1974 the town served as a meeting place for those involved in the Carnation Revolution.

Óbidos is above all a preserved medieval town, and its streets, squares, walls and castle are its attraction; in 2007 the castle was voted second among the Seven Wonders of Portugal. The town has turned its past into a calendar of events: a medieval fair in July, when the castle and the streets return to the Middle Ages for two weeks, a chocolate festival in March, and a Christmas village in December.

Books are the newer identity. The town has around 14 bookshops, one of them inside a church and another that sells fish as well as books, and in 2013 the council launched a literature programme that created the FOLIO international literary festival, held each October since 2015. The same year UNESCO named Óbidos a City of Literature in its Creative Cities Network.

Art has older roots. The painter Josefa de Óbidos is among its best-known figures, and her work hangs in the municipal museum alongside paintings by André Reinoso. The town's motto, mui nobre e sempre leal, "very noble and ever loyal", recalls its resistance in a 13th-century succession crisis. Ginja, the sour-cherry liqueur, is part of the town's image, sold from stalls and shops along the main street.

The walled town itself is small — around 3,100 people live in the town proper — and the municipality had about 12,000 inhabitants at the 2021 census, spread across seven parishes of farmland, villages and coast. Caldas da Rainha, the neighbouring city, is the larger centre for shopping, services and work.

Tourism is the town's economy. Visitors come in large numbers in summer and during the festivals, and the shops, cafés, galleries and bookshops inside the walls depend on them. Around the town, the Oeste countryside is farmed, and the municipality's coast near the lagoon has some of Portugal's best-known golf resorts.

The rhythm of the walled town follows the visitors: lanes fill from mid-morning when the coaches arrive and empty again by evening, when the few residents inside the walls have the streets to themselves. Many people live in the newer houses outside the gate and in the villages around, and the lagoon and the beaches at Foz do Arelho draw local families on summer weekends.

The drink of Óbidos is ginja, or ginjinha, a liqueur made by infusing sour Morello cherries in aguardente and adding sugar, most often with cloves and cinnamon. It is typical of several towns in Portugal's Oeste and Lisbon regions, but Óbidos has made it its own by serving it in a small edible chocolate cup. The sour cherries used for the ginja of Óbidos and nearby Alcobaça were put forward for Protected Geographical Indication status in 2013.

Chocolate itself has become a local theme through the International Chocolate Festival each spring, with life-size chocolate sculptures and workshops for children.

Eating out is concentrated in the restaurants and taverns along the Rua Direita and the lanes inside the walls, with more seafood-minded places at Foz do Arelho by the lagoon. The wider region shapes the menu, with Portugal's convent sweets, built on egg yolks and sugar, and fish from the nearby Atlantic coast. In neighbouring Caldas da Rainha, a summer festival each August serves food from each of its parishes.