The story of Bom Jesus do Monte

Climbing this staircase was meant to be a journey of the soul. The Baroque stairway rises 116 metres up the hill, with 583 steps in all, and by tradition pilgrims were encouraged to climb it on their knees. The first flight, begun under Archbishop Rodrigo de Moura Teles from 1722, is lined with chapels of the Way of the Cross, each with terracotta figures of the Passion.

Then comes a zigzag stairway of the Five Senses, each sense with its own fountain, and above it a third flight for Faith, Hope and Charity. The fountains suggest the purification of the faithful as they rise from the senses of the material world to the virtues of the spirit. At the top stands the church by Carlos Amarante, begun in 1784 and one of the first Neoclassical churches in Portugal.

Since 1882 a water-balance funicular, the first in the Iberian Peninsula, has offered an easier way up. UNESCO listed the sanctuary in 2019.