The University of Coimbra was founded in 1290 by King Dom Dinis, making it the oldest in Portugal and one of the oldest in the world. It sits on the former Paço da Alcáçova, a Moorish citadel that became Portugal's first royal palace in 1130. When the kings moved out, the scholars moved in.

You enter through the Porta Férrea, a hilltop gateway above the Mondego River, into a complex that holds the Royal Palace, the Chapel of São Miguel and the Biblioteca Joanina, one of Europe's great baroque libraries. Each May, graduates parade for Queima das Fitas; after dark, male students still sing Coimbra's Fado, a sombre local cousin of Lisbon's more famous song.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours trace the university's fingerprints across the old town, following Dom Dinis's medieval foundation, the 18th-century Pombaline Reform that remade its sciences, and the student protests that rocked its streets under Salazar.