Coimbra

Coimbra, once the medieval capital of Portugal for more than a hundred years and the site of the country's most excellent University for the past five centuries, is one of the largest in Portugal, founded in 1290. And no other Portuguese city like Coimbra regarding academic tradition in the students' everyday life. Coimbra wears its grave importance in Portuguese History with dignity and its atmospheric, beautiful historical stairways and alleys down a hillside in a lovely setting on the east bank of the Mondego river. A city of narrow streets, courtyards and medieval arches, Coimbra was the birthplace of six Portuguese kings, the First Dynasty.

If "Coimbra is a lesson", as the popular fado song says, Coimbra is firstly a lesson of Portuguese History.