A Roman villa and a castle in Torres Novas

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Torres Novas sits where the limestone of the Serra de Aire meets the fertile plains of the River Almonda, and people have lived here since the Palaeolithic, in caves along the Almonda's karst system. In early Roman times Cardílio and Avita owned the Villa Cardílio, a Lusitanian-Roman villa lived in from the 1st to the 4th century AD and a National Monument since 1967. Among its mosaics, coins and sculptures is a Latin inscription that, in one reading, wishes the couple happiness in their "villa of the tower", a plausible origin of the name Torres Novas. The area, then known as Turris, was taken from the Arabs by Afonso Henriques in 1148, and Sancho I founded the municipality with a charter on 1 October 1190 and had the ruined castle rebuilt. Ferdinand I rebuilt it again after the wars with Castile, and it has been a National Monument since 1910. The town received a fair charter in 1263, passed to Queen Saint Isabel of Aragon in 1304 as a gift from King Dinis, and later hosted the Cortes and key events, such as the establishment of the regency of Leonor of Aragon in 1438. Manuel I granted a new charter in 1510. In 1783 Queen Maria I licensed a printed-cotton factory, the Fábrica das Chitas, which Masséna's troops destroyed in the third French invasion in 1810. The 19th century brought a paper mill and a spinning company, and a narrow-gauge railway to Alcanena opened in 1893, nicknamed the "Comboio Menino" and, after many derailments, the "Rata Cega"; it closed three years later. Torres Novas became a city in 1985.

Craft beer in Torres Novas is still a rare find, so it is worth asking locally before you set out.