Piódão

Piódão is built on a steep slope in the Serra do Açor from the schist the mountain is made of - dark grey walls, schist-slab roofs, houses stacked in tiers so the whole settlement reads as an amphitheatre - and the one thing that is not schist is the paintwork: the door and window frames are blue, and the usual explanation is that the village shop, being remote, stocked only blue paint. The church at the centre is whitewashed, which makes it stand out sharply. Piódão is one of the Aldeias do Xisto, a network of schist villages promoted for tourism after decades of depopulation, and it is the best known of them. Electricity arrived in 1972 and a proper road later still. It is beautiful and it is also small, remote and now heavily visited, with the tension that produces in a village of a few dozen residents.

What you actually see

• The schist tiers - dark stone houses stacked in an amphitheatre on the slope.
• The blue frames - door and window paint, said to be what the shop stocked.
• The white church - the one non-schist building at the centre.
• The Aldeias do Xisto - the network of schist villages this one leads.

When to go

April to June and September to November. Half a day. Weekdays outside August are far quieter.

Honest expectations

Two to three hours of winding mountain road from Coimbra. Very steep stepped lanes throughout. Parking is outside the village and limited. It is tiny - an hour covers it - and busy with day visitors relative to its size. The 2017 fires burned much of the surrounding serra.

Nearby

Fraga da Pena and the Mata da Margaraça are north; Serra da Estrela is east.