Exploring Portugal’s Douro Valley

After a summer exploring the interconnections between Adirondacks’ built environment and the natural world, a group of AARCH supporters traveled in early October to Portugal’s Douro Valley to learn more about its relationship between nature and culture.

Our AARCH group spent 10 days exploring this connection, along with many other World Heritage Sites in Portugal and Salamanca, Spain. We traveled with colleagues and friends from the Landmark Society of Western New York and PUSH Physical Theatre, sharing our love of and appreciation for cultural heritage across the world. 

We spent five days traveling on the Douro River, from Porto to Vega Terrón, at the Portuguese border with Spain, and back. For almost two thousand years, humans have shaped the mountainous landscape of this river valley for wine production, shaping the natural environment with terraced vineyards to maximize limited land and water resources. While continuing to evolve, this cultural landscape has been recognized as a World Heritage Site by the World Heritage Convention of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNSECO). Similarly, the Adirondack Forest Preserve is a National Historic Landmark, recognized as a heavily managed and protected wilderness, itself a cultural landscape shaped by intentional human action and preservation. 

While our trip focused on the Douro River, we began with two days in Lisbon, where we visited Portugal’s National Tile Museum, learning the history of the ubiquitous decorative architectural tile art found throughout the city and region, as well as A Severa, a traditional Fado house for dinner and a performance. 

During our free time in Lisbon, I went to the Aljube Museum of Resistance and Freedom. The Aljube Prison building that houses the museum dates partially to the Portuguese Moorish Era, serving as a prison for much of its existence, including during the Portuguese dictatorial regime from 1926 to 1974. The incredibly moving and compelling interpretation had an even greater impact by being housed within the prison. It led to reflection on AARCH’s conversations about interpretation and adaptive use of institutional buildings within the Adirondacks. Could Camp Gabriels interpret the Adirondacks’ history of institutionalization? 

Through the course of the trip, we explored additional World Heritage sites including the Jerónimos Monastery and the Belém Tower in Lisbon, University of Coimbra, the Old City of Salamanca, and the historic center of Porto. Over multiple stops, we observed signs and symbols that let us know we were one of the Camino routes to Santiago de Compostela, a network of pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela that are over a thousand years old. This was especially apparent in Salamanca and Porto, where we also met people traveling the Camino. Camino routes are marked historically (and currently) by a scallop shell symbol. There are many legends about why the scallop shell symbolizes the Camino, currently it is seen as representing the many routes that lead to Santiago de Compostela. 

We ended our time in Portugal with an architectural tour of Porto, where archaeology has shown human occupation since 800 BCE. We traveled under the Dom Luís I Bridge, built by a student of Gustav Eiffel, and explored the historic center, with its rich collection of architecture from Romanesque to modern. As always, our time together was marked by curiosity, engagement, and fellowship, the perfect closing to our 2025 tour season. See you all next year!