Igreja de Sao Tiago, Obidos

Igreja de Sao Tiago, Obidos tickets: which one to buy

The church stands just inside the walls of Obidos, below the castle, and it no longer functions as a church at all: it holds a bookshop, one of several the town has installed in unexpected buildings, with shelves built between the columns and under the altar arch. Entry is free and you may browse or buy. Obidos is an easy hour from Lisbon by bus or car and is usually done as a day trip, often combined with the monastery at Alcobaca, the abbey at Batalha and the fishing town of Nazare;

those coach itineraries allow about ninety minutes here, which covers the main street, the walls and one or two of the churches. Walking tours of the village are short and inexpensive. Staying overnight inside the walls is expensive but transforms the visit, since the crowds leave by six. Parking is outside the gates, and the village itself is closed to cars for most of the day.

Visiting Igreja de Sao Tiago, Obidos: what to see

A church was founded here in the twelfth century, immediately after the town was taken from the Moors, and it served the castle alongside it as a royal chapel. The earthquake of 1755 wrecked it, as it wrecked most of Portugal, and it was rebuilt afterwards in a plain form with a single nave and a rebuilt front. Deconsecrated in the twentieth century, it stood empty until the town's cultural programme turned it into a bookshop in 2013, keeping the structure untouched and inserting freestanding timber shelving that can be removed.

The result is one of the more persuasive reuses of a redundant church anywhere: the space still reads as a nave, the stone is bare, and the altar area holds the poetry section. The town runs a literary festival built partly around it. Two other churches in Obidos keep their azulejo interiors and remain in use. Shelving inside is freestanding timber and can be taken out entirely, which is how the reuse won approval.

Igreja de Sao Tiago, Obidos opening hours and the best time to go

Obidos is at its most crowded in the middle of the day from May to September and at weekends all year. The village stages a chain of festivals that dominate its calendar: a chocolate festival in spring, a medieval market through July and August with costumed stalls along the main street, and a Christmas town from late November with a market inside the walls. Each fills the village completely and each is ticketed at the gate.

Outside those weeks the place is quiet on a weekday morning and the walls, which can be walked right round without a handrail in most places, are the best thing to do. The cherry liqueur sold in chocolate cups at every second door is the local speciality. Twenty minutes in the bookshop church is enough. The walls have no railings and are closed in wet weather, so keep the walk for a dry morning.