Portugal was born in Guimarães. At least that is what the – modern – inscription on one of its walls says, in allusion to the fact that the first independent Portuguese king, Afonso Henriques, established his court in this town, after defeating the army of Leon in a battle waged close by: a romanticized medieval past that we are able to imagine thanks to the well preserved historic core, and which has now, if on a contemporary note, been the inspiration for a new local clothing store.

Electrowelded cages with a crenellated profile are repeated throughout like buttresses of an ethereal fortification, filled with tons of crushed granite that give the place the gravitas of a ruin. Besides integrating the display units, they form the partitions of a central area, like a keep, multiplying the exhibition surfaces and accommodates the fitting room. Blocks of the same stone that serve either as benches or display tops, in combination with six rocky pedestals as props, wrap up this bastion which is simultaneously futuristic and an echo of the secular history of the Berço da Nacionalidade.