Bordado de Castelo Branco

The colcha de Castelo Branco is an embroidered bedspread: linen woven locally, worked in silk thread dyed with natural colours, using a stitch particular to the region that produces a dense raised surface, and traditionally made by a woman for her own marriage over months or years. The imagery is the interesting part - trees of life, birds, hearts, carnations, suns and moons, and figures whose iconography carries survivals of older symbolism read variously as fertility, sun-and-moon duality and love vows, with pieces surviving from the seventeenth century onward. It declined heavily in the twentieth century and was revived through a municipal school and workshop, which now trains embroiderers, certifies genuine pieces and sells them; a bedspread takes months of work and is priced accordingly. The Cargaleiro museum and the regional museum in the old episcopal palace show historic examples.

What you actually see

• The regional stitch - a dense raised silk embroidery specific to this area.
• The imagery - trees of life, birds, hearts and sun-and-moon motifs.
• The workshop - the municipal school training and certifying embroiderers.
• The historic pieces - examples from the seventeenth century in the town museums.

When to go

Year-round. One to two hours. The workshop keeps working hours on weekdays; museums close on Mondays.

Honest expectations

Genuine pieces cost hundreds or thousands of euros because of the months of work involved - machine imitations are sold elsewhere. The workshop is a working school, not a display. Castelo Branco is hot in summer. Labelling is mainly in Portuguese.

Nearby

The episcopal palace gardens are in the city; Idanha-a-Velha and Monsanto are north-east.