Description Gouveia

Gouveia, which is discovered carefully stretched out on the northwest slope of Serra da Estrela, is the supreme entrance to the highest mountain in mainland Portugal.

The superb and distant views that are reached from here, do justice to the city's place name, which, due to its breathtaking landscape, even the Romans impressed. This place was called Gaudella, a place with a pleasant view, beautiful or rejoicing, which fills the eyes and the heart of those who see it.

The various references that we are discovering in the landscape, such as the Coruto de Alfátima, an imposing and old lookout post that is the birthplace of legends where Júlio César and an Emir de Manteigas appear, and the ruins near the medieval village of Castro Verde, an old abandoned village following plagues, they prove the age-old complementarity between man and nature.

Upon reaching the plateau, the Rossim Valley opens up, a unique place where the most crystalline waters spring from the hardness of granite, which, in the cold of winter, covered in white, warms the soul of those who appreciate beautiful things and, in summer, invites long baths in a magnificent mirror of water.

Ahead, the fountain of Mondeguinho, where the largest exclusively Portuguese river takes its first steps and continues to tread the valley at Casais de Folgosinho, which opens in a window of colors, textures and smells. It was the men and women who molded this environmentally friendly environment, designed with schist houses, to their image and necessity, where time flows with the taste of the clear waters of the Mondego, to the rhythm of the bleating and rattle of the flocks of sheep, whose milk produces the famous and genuine Serra da Estrela cheese.

From there to Penhas Douradas, a small path takes us to the salubrity of the mountain air, to the life that finds peace of mind here.