Caldas da Rainha, "the queen's hot springs", owes its name and its birth to Queen Leonor, wife of King John II. According to tradition, in 1484 the queen, passing through, saw peasants bathing in pools of hot sulphurous water and, trying them, was cured of an ailment. She then decided to found a thermal hospital, opened in 1485 and considered the oldest thermal hospital in the world. The town grew up around it.
The spa and the park
The thermal hospital still stands in the centre, next to the church of Nossa Senhora do Pópulo, built for the queen, with a Manueline tower and an azulejo-lined interior. Behind it stretches the large D. Carlos I Park, with a lake, tree-lined avenues and nineteenth-century pavilions, home to the José Malhoa Museum, devoted to the naturalist painter born in the town and to Portuguese artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Ceramics
Caldas has been a capital of ceramics for centuries. Its most famous name is Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro, artist, caricaturist and potter, who in 1884 founded a factory here, still active, known for tableware shaped like cabbage leaves, fruit and animals. Bordalo also created Zé Povinho, the caricature of the Portuguese common man thumbing his nose at the powerful, who has become a national symbol. You can visit the ceramics museum, the factory shop and the trail of ceramic sculptures dotted around town. A more ribald tradition is the cheeky phallus-shaped ceramics sold as souvenirs.
Praça da Fruta
Every morning, on Praça da República, known as Praça da Fruta, local farmers hold a fruit and vegetable market, one of the few daily open-air markets in the country. Caldas is also known for its sweets, cavacas and beijinhos.
Foz do Arelho
About ten kilometres away, on the Óbidos Lagoon, Foz do Arelho has an ocean beach and a lagoon beach with calm water, ideal for sailing and kitesurfing. Caldas is linked to Lisbon by train and bus (about an hour and a quarter); Óbidos is just six kilometres away.