City walk · Ribeira & Sé, Porto · Portugal
Camilo Castelo Branco
1825–1890 · a real person
a jailed romantic novelist of 1861 — sardonic, self-mocking, tender when he forgets to be bitter
Read what Camilo Castelo Branco says
They will tell you I am a novelist. In this city I was, for a time, simply prisoner number nothing, on the second floor of the Relação, with Ana Plácido two corridors away and her husband's lawyers downstairs. From my window I could see a bell tower, and I wrote a book in the time it takes most men to choose a hat. Walk with me — from that tower, past the court that judged me, to the jail, and down to the water where all my unhappy lovers end. I want you to see which parts of my sentence the city kept.
5.0 (1)62 min · 2.2 km · 8 stops · medium
You’re walking this one before anyone at Walk & Tell has. If something looks wrong, tap Report at any stop — we’ll fix it for everyone after you.
Partly shadedBest time to walk: Late afternoon: the Cordoaria has shade, the Ribeira quay gets the low light, and the bridge is best around sunset. The photography centre in the old jail is closed Mondays, and the Bolsa keeps ticketed hours — but every stop works from the street.
The walk
In 1860 Porto's most famous writer was locked in the city's Relação jail for loving another man's wife — and there, in fifteen days, he wrote the novel that made him immortal. This walk follows Camilo Castelo Branco out of the Cordoaria, down through the Vitória lanes and the merchants' quarter to the Douro, the streets that fill his books. No puzzles: just a voice from the 1860s telling you what happened on each of these corners. It ends on the iron bridge, looking back at the tower he could see from his window.
