Portugal

A fortified Manueline tower at the mouth of the Tagus, built 1515–1520 to guard Lisbon's harbour and bless ships setting out on voyages of discovery.

A spectacular sea cave along the Algarve coast, accessible only by boat or by swimming from the adjacent Benagil Beach, famous for the round hole in its ceiling that lets a column of sunlight fall onto the sandy floor below.

The steep terraced valley of the Douro River in northern Portugal, its south-facing hillsides covered in wine terraces that produce port wine and table wines, grown in schistous soils that are among the most inhospitable vineyard land in Europe.

A vast Manueline sandstone monastery in Belém, built 1495–1550 under King Manuel I to commemorate Vasco da Gama's return from India, designed by Diogo Boitác and covered in stone carvings that transform the Portuguese Age of Discoveries into an architectural programme.

A Romanticist hilltop palace above Sintra, begun in 1842 by King Ferdinand II around a former Hieronymite monastery, later extended by the Baron of Eschwege into a vivid fairy-tale fortress visible across the Serra de Sintra.

The historic waterfront quarter of Porto, a UNESCO-inscribed grid of narrow streets and multicoloured houses tumbling down to the Douro River, lined with port wine cellars and open-air cafés that have watched rabelo boats and cargo ships come and go for five centuries.