Castelo Branco, Portugal, 1982
It was the summer of 1982, and I was hiking a quiet rural road somewhere outside Castelo Branco in the Beira Baixa region of eastern Portugal, close to Spain. I was with a Portuguese friend who was well informed of the area’s rich cultural tradition, one stretching back beyond the reach of recorded history. Our path for the day was well marked, winding over mellow hills and along low stone walls that crumbled in places. We weren’t looking for anything in particular—just walking, talking, letting the landscape speak.
Then we saw it: a pile of rubble on the roadside, likely the remains of a collapsed wall or refuse collected from a forgotten structure. Amid the broken stones, one piece caught my eye. It had a distinct spiral pattern, almost fossil-like in its curve. I bent down, lifted it, and turned it in my hands. The swirl reminded me of ammonites I’d seen in books—and I said as much to my friend.
But as we studied the stone more closely, something shifted. The spiral wasn’t organic—it was deliberate. Carved. The texture wasn’t sedimentary, but architectural. We began to wonder: could this be a fragment of a column? A piece of an ancient building?
As you can see from the photos the fragment is no more than a handspan across. It's carved in granite, the spiral curve softened by centuries of wind and rain. Even today I remember how the moment we discovered the piece actually felt quiet, almost ceremonial—as if it had been waiting to be noticed.
What we had found was a ‘volute,' which is the spiral scroll that often adorns the top of classical columns. From what I’ve read, in architectural terms, the swirl is part of ‘the capital,’ the decorative element that crowns a column and transitions to the structure above it. More specifically, the fragment likely came from a cornice, the projecting ledge that runs along the top edge of a wall or column, often carved in Roman, Baroque or later styles. The volute would have curled outward, catching light and shadow, adding definition to the façade.
The stone itself is rough and speckled, maybe even quarried not far from where we stood that day. Its surface bore various marks of time, including some discolouration and a break that suggested it had been torn from its original place by collapse or neglect. Yet even in its brokenness, the piece conveyed a message: This old thing has meaning.
What surprises me today is how a single ‘artifact’ evokes centuries of cultural layering. As any Portuguese person will tell you, their country's architectural tradition stretches back through the Roman occupation, and even earlier, to pre-Roman Iberian tribes who built with stone. In Évora, far to the south from Beira Baixa, Roman columns still stand, weathered but proud. In Estremoz, also to the south, marble palaces whisper of Moorish and medieval grandeur. Closer to Castelo Branco, below the tiny castle town of Marvao, a Roman bridge still stands.
In the photos here, you’ll see the stone fragment cradled in my hands: a rough, irregularly shaped piece of granite, with shades of gray, white, and black, its texture is coarse, elemental. The spiral is subtle but unmistakable—an elegant curve emerging from the stone’s rugged surface.
Castelo Branco was once Constantia, a Roman outpost on the edge of empire. The hills here still carry the imprint of Roman construction, their stones repurposed in chapels and manors across the centuries. This volute may well have begun its life in a Roman civic building, or perhaps in a bathhouse or temple, with its spiral echoing the order and symmetry of classical design.
Or perhaps the piece was lifted from an earlier ruin and set into a later edifice, like a medieval chapel. In Beira Baixa, history doesn’t layer—it weaves. Roman, Romanesque, Baroque—all coexist in the architecture, each style borrowing from the last, adapting to the terrain and the times.
I’ve carried this fragment around the world with me, and it reminds me that sometimes, the most interesting discoveries aren’t made in museums or archives—but on forgotten roads, beside a friend, in the company of curiosity.
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