Hidden Beja of Gastronomy and History Experience in Alentejo

You meet the group on the square and the first thing Vasco asks you to do is look up. The stone along the top of the church is cut so finely it looks like lace, and it has been there since 1459. Then he tells you about the family that lived next door, and about a ninth son, the one nobody counted for anything, who ended up king; how that happened is the first story of the day. There is a second one, about a nun who lived behind this wall, whose love letters all of Europe read, and about a doubt over those letters that has never been settled. The museum is closed for restoration, so you stay outside, and there is nothing to pay.

You push the church door and step out of the sun into cool, still air. Vasco walks you along one wall and asks you to notice where the stone changes; once you see it, you can pick out the older church inside the newer one. It is said something else stood on this spot before any church did, and he tells you what. Then you go back out to the yard by the door, and he explains what a crowd did here in 1383 that ended with them marching up the hill to the castle. Admission is included.

You turn a corner and the light goes; the lane is suddenly narrow and cool. It bends, then bends again, and Vasco tells you that this is on purpose, and why. Somewhere in these lanes, in 1040, a boy was born who grew up to be a king and a poet, and whose story ends a long way from here; you hear it as you walk. Before you leave, Vasco asks you to say the city's name out loud, because it hides a surprise. You come out through the Porta de Moura. Public streets, nothing to pay.

You put your hand flat on the castle wall, down near the ground, and Vasco asks what you notice. The stones under your palm are older and straighter than the ones above; who laid them is the first question of this stop. Inside, you touch the Torre de Menagem and it is cool marble, which is odd for a tower built for war. You can climb its 198 steps if you want to, and from the top the plain runs out flat to Spain; the climb is optional. Then you cross to the cathedral, where the altars came from somewhere else entirely, and Vasco asks which saint it is named after; it is said the answer makes it unusual among Portuguese cathedrals. Castle admission is included.

You come out into the widest square in the old town and Vasco walks you to the building at the top, the one with three big arches. It was not built as a church, and nobody guesses what it was; you get three tries. Then he asks you to stand in the middle of the square and look down at the stones under your feet, because there is something under them, and the story of what the city did when it found it is the one Vasco keeps for here.

You step into a small room off the Largo de São João and the floor under you is glass. Vasco asks you to look down. There is a wall of rough stones, older than anything Roman; a little further, the floor of a bath; above them, the streets people walked in the Islamic and medieval town