About Tiago Vilaça

The counting problem, which explains the rest

The Confraria do Bom Jesus do Monte, which owns and runs the sanctuary, counts 573 steps from the portico to the churchyard: 376 up to the Five Senses, then 104, then 93. English Wikipedia says 583. Both numbers are published in good faith. The Confraria’s own page separately counts 34 more stairs below the churchyard, so where you start and stop moves the total, and nobody is lying to anybody.

That is a small thing and it is the whole method of this site. Where two sources disagree I print both, say which one I follow, and say why. I do not split the difference to get a tidier sentence. The stairway page does this at length, and the funicular page does it again with two engineers whose roles the English-language sources have reversed.

Why I built it

People arrive in Braga trying to buy a ticket for Bom Jesus do Monte. There is no ticket. The grounds are free and open around the clock, the basilica is free, and the only fare on the hill is the funicular, which is a couple of euros paid on the spot. Once you know that, the question changes: not which ticket, but whether you want somebody with you and how you are getting up. The tickets page is that answer in full, and the cost page builds the rest of the day up from zero.

The tours are the other half of it. I have listed 22 guided products that reach Bom Jesus. 11 of them go on to Guimarães and 11 do not, and exactly one includes the funicular ticket. Those two facts decide more about your day than the price does, so the comparison and the reviews are built around them rather than around a ranking.

What this site is not

I am not the sanctuary. It belongs to the Confraria do Bom Jesus do Monte, whose address, telephone number and email sit in the footer of every page here and whose own site is bomjesus.pt. If you need to ask about a mass, a wedding, or whether the basilica is open on a particular morning, ask them rather than me.

I am also not a tour operator and I sell nothing. I cannot change, cancel or refund a booking. What I can do is tell you what a tour includes, what its reviewers actually wrote, and when the train would serve you better than a tour would, which from Porto is more often than the listings suggest. That argument is on the Porto page.

How it is paid for

If you book a tour through a link here, GetYourGuide pays me a small commission and you pay the same price you would have paid anyway. That is the entire business model, it is set out in the affiliate disclosure, and it does not decide what I write. The tour I point at most often for the sanctuary itself is the cheapest guided option on the site, which should tell you roughly what the commission is worth to me.

Corrections

If a number here is wrong, or a fare has moved, or a bus no longer runs the way I say it does, tell me. I will fix it and say that I have. Contact is here. I would rather be corrected than consistent.

Frequently asked questions