Portas do Sol :: Doorway to the Sun

Some more photos from Santarem {in Portugal} the city where I was born. These were taken when I last visited sometime during early spring this year.

Portas do Sol are translated as the ‘doorway to the sun’…what a beautiful name don’t you think?

As a city built on a hill the ‘doorways’ were originally the city’s medieval castle.

Now these ruins are still the best look out spot to the river underneath and surrounding lands.

A quietude of landscape and colour, the green of the cultivated lands touching the sky.  

No wonder this has been, for decades, a preferred spot for local lovers.

The gardens are beautiful to visit, the rows of inclined trees and vegetation make it such a peaceful spot…and oh! how the sun visits this place – without a doubt, my favourite maze of shadows lie here.

As I visited when I was younger and found it a place of adventure and freedom, I always return - now in my late thirties as a place to relax, reminisce and gaze at the wondrous land beneath…the lands that raised me, where all my childhood memories breath, where I once left my heart never to get it back.

 

photo credits: all photos by me

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