About an hour north of Lisbon lies the medieval town of Obidos with its great, extremely authentic summer medieval festival. Starting in July and going through early August, the small city is a wonderful day trip made only better with the festival — for families and adults.
Having been to several medieval festivals in the U.S., we always found them a bit cliche and over-the-top. But given how absolutely strange that epoch was, it also calls forth a bemused curiosity.
To have the festival inside an actual walled city with an intact castle? Well, that is a horse of a different color. Whatever the attraction, people just love to dress up in costumes, engage in the activities of the day and generally make merry. Certainly, this sense of fun and going back in time was pervasive in the air.
The festival was well done, the stalls and food areas, all fit within the inner courtyards of the castle; it was walled city of Obidos that made it seem real more real. It was like we were the time travelers.
As you enter Obidos, the streets are narrow, and you are forced into a single lane from the outskirts, with all the tents and wares from Portugal to Morocco; then you enter the cities gate and face white stucco houses with red tiled roofs tiered downward along the mountain the town sits atop. Once again, the main traffic is a single lane of stores and restaurants, leading past a tiny town hall, and directly into the castle gate itself. Once inside the castle wall, the festival unfolds in delightful authenticity. The “food court” is a neat square of food stands and their large meat portions on spits above fires. Men wearing ragged tunics. Mead in large mugs abound. Kids and nearly everyone is not only dressed in medieval garb, but acting out little of-the-period scenes, almost spontaneously — like the small troop of armored soldiers who occasionally marched around.
The word “festive” goes back to the 17th century and is based on the Latin word “Festum”. Why is that important? Only because the day, the town, the ramparts you could walk, the music, food and drink…all made for a wonderful, festival. The embodiment of the word.
Outspoken Traveler 
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