Journey to Portugal by José Saramago

Early the next morning, the traveller left Leiria. There was a certain solemnity to his departure, due not so much to the fact that his journey was to include several places of historical or artistic merit, but because, after visiting so many grand houses, the time had come to visit the oldest one. But let's not get ahead of ourselves: the first stop on the route is Porto de Mós.

This is a luminous, pretty town, with white house fronts, that is clustered around its castle. This monument is more than enough for the traveller. The Count of Ourém's palace attracts from afar, with its gleaming tall cone-shaped turrets, the vast opening of its main gate, the surprise it and the similar ones at Feira and Ourém offer in the Portuguese landscape. In fact, they could be its mother and father, if chronology shows that neither of them are its offspring. In the end, the castle at Porto de Mos is more like the one at Ourém. The hand of Dom Afonso is plain here-that strange character who lies in the crypt of the town church and whose emblem-two winches-puts him closer to engineers than his birth and heraldry might suggest. There can be no doubt about it though: Dom Afonso, Count of Ourém, was noble and pure of blood. It is hard to see him breaking with his class.