라메구 대성당

Lamego Cathedral — Lamego, PT

Lamego Cathedral was founded about 1129 by Afonso I; its twelfth-century Romanesque tower survives while the nave was rebuilt in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. A long-held tradition placed Portugal's first assembly here in 1143, acknowledging Afonso as king, but the 'Cortes of Lamego' is now known to have been invented in the seventeenth century to justify Portuguese independence — history and manufactured memory overlapping in one town. The ceiling inside carries eighteenth-century frescoes by Nicolau Nasoni, the architect of Porto's Clérigos, a rare surviving work of his as a painter. The sixteenth-century Renaissance cloister is well preserved. Lamego is the central town of the Douro wine region, and the stair to the Sanctuary of Remedies leads up from near the cathedral.