Portalegre Tapestries

The Manufactura de Tapeçarias de Portalegre was founded in 1946 in a former textile city, and it developed a technique of its own - the ponto de Portalegre, a stitch that lets weavers reproduce a painting's gradations far more closely than classical Gobelins weaving, using yarns dyed in thousands of shades and worked on a vertical loom at a very fine count. The result is that painters could hand over a work and have it translated into wool at scale, and many did: Vieira da Silva, Almada Negreiros, Le Corbusier, Lurçat, Julio Pomar and Graça Morais among them, with tapestries going to public buildings, embassies and collections worldwide. The museum in the city shows finished pieces alongside the cartoons and yarn ranges, and the workshop still produces to commission, with weavers working at looms that visitors can sometimes see.

What you actually see

• The Portalegre stitch - a technique developed here to reproduce painting closely in wool.
• The artists - work translated for Vieira da Silva, Le Corbusier, Lurçat and others.
• The yarn range - thousands of dyed shades used to match a painter's gradations.
• The working looms - weavers still producing to commission at the manufactory.

When to go

Year-round. One to two hours. The museum has set hours; workshop visits need arranging in advance and depend on what is in production.

Honest expectations

Seeing weavers at work is not guaranteed - it depends on current commissions and requires booking. The museum is small. Portalegre is a long way from the main routes. Labelling is mainly in Portuguese.

Nearby

The Serra de São Mamede park surrounds the city; Marvão and Castelo de Vide are north.