Braga

Braga is Portugal’s oldest city and its religious heart, and it wears both lightly: a compact baroque centre of churches, tiled facades and cafe-lined squares that you can cross on foot in fifteen minutes. The headline sight, Bom Jesus do Monte, sits on a wooded hill just outside town, its zig-zag stairway of fountains and saints climbing to a sanctuary with long views back over the Minho. The mistake first-timers make is treating Braga as a half-day stop from Porto and arriving too late to do the climb justice.

Give it two nights instead. One afternoon covers the Sé cathedral, the Santa Barbara garden and a drink on Avenida da Liberdade; the next morning is Bom Jesus, with time to ride the world’s oldest water-powered funicular up and walk down past the fountains. Braga is also the cheaper, calmer counterweight to Porto, and it pairs neatly with Guimaraes by train for a quiet northern leg.

The one date to watch is the São João festival around 23-24 June, when the streets fill with grilled sardines, bonfires and people gently bopping each other with squeaky plastic hammers. It is brilliant fun, but rooms book out months ahead and prices climb, so decide early whether you want the party or the quiet. Below, the structured planning — where to stay, what to see, how to get up from Porto airport and a realistic budget in pounds — picks up from here.