Sanctuary of Bom Jesus do Monte

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Above Braga, Portugal's city of archbishops, rises one of the most theatrical pilgrimages in Christendom: a Baroque stairway of nearly six hundred steps zigzagging up the wooded hillside to the church of the Good Jesus. Begun in 1722 under Archbishop Rodrigo de Moura Telles, the ascent unfolds like a sermon in granite, chapels with terracotta scenes of the Passion, then the Stairway of the Five Senses with its allegorical fountains, then the Stairway of the Three Virtues of faith, hope and charity, until the twin-towered church crowns the summit. Pilgrims have climbed it for three centuries, some on their knees, though since 1882 a water-powered funicular, the oldest of its kind still running, offers a gentler way up. UNESCO listed the whole sacred mount in 2019, a stairway where the body climbs and the soul is meant to climb with it.