Viseu

Viseu stands on a plateau in the Beira Alta, where Roman roads once joined Mérida, Lisbon and Galicia. Local tradition ties the area to Viriathus, the Lusitanian chief who held out against Rome. A bishop sat here by the 560s, and in the twelfth century Count Henry and Countess Teresa made Viseu their court and gave it a charter in 1123. Some chronicles name it as the birthplace of their son Afonso Henriques, Portugal's first king. A new charter followed in 1187.

The Gothic cathedral, begun in the Middle Ages, gained a cloister around 1352. During the succession crisis of 1383–85 the city was besieged by Juan I of Castile, and John I of Portugal began the walls that were finished only in 1472. Prince Henry the Navigator became Duke of Viseu in 1415. The painter Vasco Fernandes, called Grão Vasco, was born here in 1475. Around 1501–1506 he and Francisco Henriques worked on an altarpiece for the cathedral; who painted which panels has been debated.