GUIMARAES · JANUARY · THE MONTH IN NUMBERS
January hands Guimarães an average high of 57.2°F and an average low of 43.5°F, with 5.94 inches of rain falling across 12.8 days. That is a coat-and-shell winter, not a canceled trip. Portugal’s first capital, founded in the 10th century and running the country in the 12th, keeps its medieval street plan inside a protected perimeter of 38.2 hectares, and a compact town is what a wet month rewards: the walk between two stops is measured in minutes, not in blocks.
What the month takes away is light. On January 15 the sun comes up at 7:56 a.m. and is gone by 5:31 p.m., leaving 9 hours 35 minutes to work with, and 5.5 days of an average January deliver 0.39 inch of rain or more. If the date is still open, the twelve-month view sits in our best time to visit Portugal, and the region around the town in Porto and the North.
THE MONTH AT A GLANCE · GUIMARAES · JANUARY
January is the coldest and the second-wettest of Guimarães’ three winter months, and the 38.2-hectare historic core is small enough that 12.8 rain days cost you walking time rather than the trip.
1991-2020 IPMA NORMALS · STATION 545, 67.7 M · 9 H 35 MIN OF LIGHT ON JAN 15
Go for: a protected core of 38.2 hectares you can cross in minutes, 19 legally protected buildings readable from the street, and the Couros tanneries just outside the walls.
Think twice before: planning outdoor days end to end: 12.8 days of the average January record 0.04 inch or more, and 5.5 of them record 0.39 inch or more.
Climate: IPMA station 545, Porto Pedras Rubras · Heritage: UNESCO file 1031bis · full sources at the end
On this page
- Guimarães weather in January57.2°F days, 5.94 inches, 12.8 rain days
- How cold do the nights get?Lows of 43.5°F, and where the thermometer stands
- Crowds, room prices and tourist taxWhat we verified, and what we could not
- Things to do in the rainThe castle, the monastic pole and the Couros Zone
- A two-day plan around 9 h 35 min of lightDay one and day two, hour by hour
- January, December or February?How the three months compare, in figures
- Is January worth it?Our verdict, and who should shift dates
Two nights is the natural length for a town this size, and January asks for one more indoor fallback than June does. Everything that is not dated by the month, from car rental to where the trains run, sits in our getting around guide.
Guimarães weather in January: average highs, lows and rain days
| January in Guimarães | 1991-2020 normal |
|---|---|
| Average high | 57.2°F (14.0°C) |
| Average low | 43.5°F (6.4°C) |
| Day-night spread | 13.7°F |
| Precipitation | 5.94 in |
| Days with 0.04 in (1 mm) or more | 12.8 |
| Days with 0.39 in (10 mm) or more | 5.5 |
| Daylight on January 15 | 9 h 35 min |
| Sunrise / sunset on January 15 | 7:56 a.m. / 5:31 p.m. |
Every figure here comes from IPMA, Portugal’s national weather service, and from its 1991-2020 normals at station 545, Porto Pedras Rubras, a real thermometer 67.7 m above sea level rather than a model grid cell. One caveat comes with it: that station sits at Porto’s airport on the coast, while Guimarães is inland, where winter nights run colder than a coastal reading suggests. Take 57.2°F by day and 43.5°F at night as the shape of the month, not as the reading on a hillside above town.
Those 5.94 inches do not arrive in one week. IPMA counts 12.8 days at 0.04 inch (1 mm) or more, measurable rain roughly two days in five, and 5.5 days at 0.39 inch (10 mm) or more, a genuine soaking about one January day in six. Watch the thresholds before you compare: US tables usually count days at 0.10 inch, so these two sets of rain-day counts are not interchangeable.
Between the average low and the average high sits 13.7°F, a small daily swing by American winter standards and a real one for packing: a warm layer you keep on at breakfast and shed by mid-afternoon. Rain gear beats an umbrella on streets this narrow, and the soles matter, because the medieval building method here puts a granite ground floor under a half-timbered upper story, and wet granite paving is slick. Our packing guide handles the rest of the bag.
Daylight on January 15 runs 9 hours 35 minutes, from 7:56 a.m. to 5:31 p.m. local, since Portugal keeps to UTC through the winter. Plan the outdoor half of the day between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. and the arithmetic works. Dinner is an indoor plan by definition in this month, and anything you wanted to photograph from the street has to happen before the squares go dark.
How warm is Guimarães in January?
The month averages 57.2°F by day and 43.5°F at night, a gap of 13.7°F. Against its neighbors, January is the coolest of the three: December runs 58.5°F by day and February 59.0°F, and both hold warmer nights, 45.7°F and 44.2°F against January’s 43.5°F.
In clothing terms, mornings are the cold part. You leave the room in the warm layer and keep it until the sun has had a few hours on the granite, then an afternoon at 57.2°F is ordinary walking weather for anyone used to a northern US winter, and uncomfortable only when the rain arrives with wind. Because the thermometer we are quoting stands on the coast, treat an inland January morning as colder than the printed low.
We found no count of nights at or below freezing at station 545, so we give none. The 43.5°F figure is a monthly average of minimum temperatures, not a floor, and individual nights go well under it. There is no water temperature for this town either: Guimarães is inland and has no coast of its own, so swimming belongs to another month and another address.
How busy is Guimarães in January? Crowds, prices and the demand peak
January falls outside the summer travel season and after the Christmas and New Year weeks. That is a calendar fact rather than a price. We found no occupancy series and no monthly room-rate series for Guimarães, so we crown no month cheapest and quote no nightly figure. For the national ladder of lodging, food and transport, see our Portugal trip cost guide; airfare moves on its own market, and our flights from the US page covers that side.
Without a rate series we also set no booking lead time in weeks. The choice that does change a January visit is where the bed sits. Inside the 38.2-hectare core, every stop is a few minutes away on foot, and 12.8 rain days turn a walk in from an outer neighborhood into the worst part of the day. Our where to stay in Portugal guide gives the regional picture before you compare two addresses.
We could not verify a municipal tourist tax for Guimarães, so no per-night amount comes from us. If a property adds one at checkout, it will say so at the booking stage: ask, then compare the two totals rather than the two headline rates. The practical layer lives in know before you go.
One upgrade genuinely changes this month, and it is heating. A room that keeps 43.5°F nights outside, with a radiator or a dryer for a soaked coat, does more for a January weekend than any view. Wet gear does not dry itself overnight in a cold room, and 5.5 days of the month deliver 0.39 inch of rain or more.
Things to do in Guimarães in January
January is the month for reading a town rather than lining up in one. UNESCO’s file flags tourism-driven gentrification as a pressure that may undermine the property over time, and it singles out the Couros Zone as needing an urgent conservation and rehabilitation strategy. Spending a low month here is a defensible answer to that. The short day pushes you into slow looking, and the whole protected core covers 38.2 hectares.
The protected property runs to 38.2 hectares, with a buffer zone of 129.4 hectares around it. Inside the walls the town grew around two poles, both standing from between 950 and 1498: the castle to the north and the monastic complex to the south, with the later expansion outside the walls around the Franciscan and Dominican houses. Nineteen properties in the perimeter are legally protected, ten as National Monuments and nine as properties of Public Interest.
The month changes the air, not the stone. The squares laid out between 1498 and 1693 are the part of the visit the weather touches, along with the Couros riverside, where the tanneries, workers’ houses and open spaces of the 19th and early 20th centuries stand unroofed. Interiors read the same in January as in July. The streets between them are darker, wetter and slower underfoot.
The public spaces belong to the municipality and cost nothing: the squares, the street grid that survived every rebuilding between 1498 and 1693, and the walk out to Couros along the river the tanners named. Most of the building stock is privately owned, so a good share of what you came to look at is a facade read from the street: granite ground floor, half-timbered story above, a technique that traveled from here to Portuguese colonies in Africa and the New World.
Guimarães in January: a two-day itinerary
Day one starts with the light. Be out by 8 a.m., minutes after the 7:56 sunrise, and take the northern pole first: the castle hill, then down through the streets to the squares. Eat indoors in the early afternoon, when the day is as warm as its 57.2°F average high allows. Give the last outdoor stretch to Couros, and be under a roof by the 5:31 p.m. sunset, which lands well before dinner.
Day two takes the southern pole, the monastic complex, then whichever of the nineteen protected buildings you have called ahead about, since no hours are published in our sources. If the rain turns heavy, and it does on 5.5 days of an average January, the 38.2-hectare perimeter is the whole defense: no two stops are far apart, and the day becomes a run of short dashes between interiors instead of a soaked hour in the open.
Guimarães in January vs December and February
| Measure | December | January | February |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average high | 58.5°F | 57.2°F | 59.0°F |
| Average low | 45.7°F | 43.5°F | 44.2°F |
| Precipitation | 6.04 in | 5.94 in | 3.85 in |
| Days with 0.04 in (1 mm) or more | 12.4 | 12.8 | 10.0 |
Set side by side, the three months differ less than a coat does. January is the coldest, at 57.2°F by day and 43.5°F at night, against 58.5°F and 45.7°F in December and 59.0°F and 44.2°F in February. December is the wettest at 6.04 inches over 12.4 days, January close behind at 5.94 inches over 12.8 days, and February the clear break at 3.85 inches over 10.0 days. None of the three carries a sea temperature, because the town is inland.
Shift four weeks forward and you buy 2.09 inches less rain, 2.8 fewer wet days and afternoons 1.8°F warmer, the biggest change among these three months. Shift four weeks back and you get December’s milder nights, 45.7°F against 43.5°F, at the cost of the holiday weeks and 0.10 inch more rain. Of the two, February is the month that changes the rain, and December the one that changes the nights.
Is January a good time to visit Guimarães?
Yes, if you want a heritage town in low light with 38.2 hectares of it inside walking distance, and if a coat and a waterproof shell are not deal-breakers. No, if the trip depends on long outdoor days: 12.8 rain days out of 31 will reshape at least one plan, and 9 hours 35 minutes of daylight puts a hard stop on the afternoon.
If that reads like a no, move to February, which cuts the rain to 3.85 inches over 10.0 days and lifts the average afternoon to 59.0°F. Same town, same scale, two fewer wet days and a little more warmth, and it is a shorter wait than holding out for spring.
What January alone gives is a visit built around 9 hours 35 minutes of light in a core of 38.2 hectares, where the short day stops being a constraint because nothing sits far from anything else.
The last word
Book two full days, one hooded coat and shoes that grip wet granite, then call each monument for its hours, because we could not verify a single opening time or ticket price. The heritage listing dates from 2001, under criteria (ii), (iii) and (iv), and was significantly redrawn in 2023, while the town’s own master plan comes from 1994 and was revised in 2015. That paperwork is what keeps a 10th-century street plan legible in the rain.
Sources & data for this guide
- January normals (57.2°F / 43.5°F, 5.94 in), rain-day counts and thresholds · IPMA, 1991-2020 climate normals, station 545 Porto Pedras Rubras, altitude 67.7 m · checked Sep 23, 2026
- December and February normals used in the comparison · same IPMA 1991-2020 series, station 545 · checked Sep 23, 2026
- Daylight, sunrise and sunset on January 15 · sunrise-sunset.org · checked Sep 23, 2026
- Perimeter (38.2 ha / 129.4 ha), inscription criteria, the two intra-muros poles, the nineteen protected properties, the Couros Zone and the 1994 master plan · UNESCO world heritage file 1031bis · checked Sep 23, 2026
- We could not verify opening hours, admission prices, a municipal tourist-tax rate or any occupancy or room-rate series for Guimarães, so we give no hours, no fees and no percentage. Station 545 stands on the coast at Porto’s airport while the town is inland: inland nights run colder than these normals.