Hello friends and welcome to Coimbra! If you
love Portugal, and want to visit not the most trivial tourist destinations,
not overloaded with tourists but with rich history, Coimbra is definitely your choice.
We'll start our journey with exploring one of the oldest universities in country:
University of Coimbra. The university is one of the oldest operating in the world and the
oldest in Portugal. It played very important role in the development of higher education
in the Portuguese speaking world. In 2013 UNESCO declared the university a world heritage site,
noting its architecture, unique culture, traditions and historical role. I thought like in every museum
you can buy tickets to the university in the university, but no, the ticket office for the
university located in the different museum - the Science museum. You should walk about seven minutes
to the ticket office you can also buy ticket online but I didn't succeed again.
So when I was thinking about visiting this university I was mostly thinking about
library: should be very beautiful place, and the clock tower. But apparently clock tower is closed,
it's not possible to climb it, so unfortunately we are not going to enjoy the beautiful view from the
clock tower. But I bought ticket. And if you want to go to this library, you should buy ticket for
everything. So we are going to see everything we can. For this library you buy ticket for the time
slot, so I should be there in 20 minutes. Joanina library - part of the university of Coimbra - is
considered one of the most beautiful libraries in the world. So you're not allowed to take pictures
and do any videos in your library but apparently for now I'm banned in this library forever
because I did some. The image of this library often finds a place in a popular culture. For example
this library was the inspiration of the scenery Hogwarts university library in the Harry Potter
films. Her photographs were also used to create the library in 2017 "Beauty and the beast" movie. Since
our ticket is all included one, after visiting library I continued to the rest of the university.
Of course you can't go anywhere you want, because students are studying. The area for tourists is
quite restricted. But if you go to the Royal palace you can also enjoy students dining room: it's quite
cheap and has lots of healthy options. Also you will be very excited about students uniform:
they wear robes that also inspired Joanne Rowling to create a uniform for Hogwarts students.
Another spectacular building: Saint Michael's chapel. The original chapel
probably dates from 11th century and has the majestic historic organ dating from 1733.
The chemistry laboratory is the most important Portuguese neoclassical building, currently it
contains some of the Science museum collection, and lots of interactive physics experiments.
After visiting university you can take a rest in botanical garden.
The entrance is free. The garden was created in 18th century.
It combines history science and nature, and also contains unique botanical collections.
Coimbra is famous not only with university but also with tons of ancient beautiful architecture,
and especially churches. So let's go and look for them
You can endlessly wander through the narrow streets of the old city of Coimbra
in search of churches, monuments, historical buildings and arches. You
should get ready that this walk can be a physical test for you,
because the old city is located on the hill and has countless amount of steps.
The most beautiful view of the city opens from the other side of Mondego river. From the
automobile bridge be sure to take a walk in the direction of the glass Pedro e Ines footbridge,
another very beautiful viewpoint of the city
This is it, I hope you enjoyed our day in Coimbra. I really tried to show the
most interesting places here and I'll see you in the next Portuguese city!