Santa Maria Da Feira

Santa Maria da Feira rehearses the Middle Ages annually, and owns the perfect set. Its castle is the most theatrical in Portugal — a fifteenth-century fantasy of turrets and cone-capped towers on a wooded rise, the textbook silhouette every child draws — and each August the town surrenders to the Viagem Medieval, one of Europe's largest historical recreations: nearly two weeks in which thousands of costumed participants fill the streets with tournaments, sieges, falconers and taverns, the castle playing itself to sold-out crowds. The town's sweeter ritual is older still: at the Festa das Fogaceiras, held each January since a sixteenth-century plague vow, girls process with fogaças — castle-shaped sweet loaves — balanced on their heads, pastry architecture honouring the stone one. Modern Feira, in the Porto metropolitan orbit, added a congress-and-concert flagship: Europarque, whose Grande Auditório — the concert record's "Gran Auditorio Europaque", a spelling flagged for the workbook — is one of northern Portugal's major halls, seating well over a thousand for the symphonic, operatic and congress seasons that serve the region. Cork and paper industries pay the bills; the Convento dos Loios museum and the Zoo Lourosa (a bird park) fill the calendar. A drawable castle, edible castles, and a concert hall: Feira stages history in every available medium.