history
Candoso (São Martinho), also known as São Martinho de Candoso, is a parish in the municipality of Guimarães, covering 2.21 km² and home to 1,234 inhabitants (2021 census).<p>Its most important monument is the Igreja Matriz de São Martinho de Candoso (Parish Church of São Martinho de Candoso), classified as a National Monument since 1910. The date of its construction is unknown, but it already existed in 1043, and the historian António Lino Neto believed that a Visigothic temple may once have stood on the site. On a stone from the former men's doorway, an inscription in Gothic lettering reads: 'In the era 210, Pedro Leão built it' — the thousands digit is missing, and in the era of Caesar this corresponds to the year 1172, most likely commemorating an enlargement of the church at a time when the parish was growing.<p>It is a single-nave Romanesque church, extensively remodelled in the neoclassical style at a later date. From the original building there survive remains of the cornice with carved corbels depicting animals and human figures, the triumphal arch with geometric motifs of early Christian tradition, and thick walls pierced by arrow-slit windows. There is one door for men and another for women, who were kept apart during services. Inside, there is a baptismal font in the Visigothic style, a pulpit set above the confessional, and two lateral altars in gilded woodwork from the seventeenth century: the one on the right featuring musician cherubs, and the one on the left with a primitive painting on wood depicting Saint Sebastian and a sainted bishop.
