GUIMARÃES · NOVEMBER · THE MONTH GUIDE
November in Guimarães runs 62.2°F by day and 48.9°F at night, with 6.53 inches of rain falling across thirteen wet days. The first capital of Portugal, founded in the 10th century and capital in the 12th, is a town of granite ground floors and half-timbered upper stories, and granite in a wet month reads darker and colder than any summer photograph of it.
What the date hands you is a short day: 9 hours 55 minutes of light on the 15th, with the sun down at 5:16 p.m. For the town in general, its streets and its beds all year, our Guimarães guide does that job, and the 12-month verdict for Portugal ranks this month against the other eleven. Below: the numbers, a two-day plan, and what shifting four weeks either way would buy.
THE MONTH AT A GLANCE · GUIMARÃES
November gives Guimarães mild 62.2°F afternoons and a 38.2-hectare stone core you can cross in minutes, and charges 13 rain days and a 5:16 p.m. sunset for it.
IPMA NORMALS 1991-2020 · STATION 545, PORTO PEDRAS RUBRAS · 67.7 M
Go for: granite-and-timber streets at 62.2°F, a medieval street layout that survived two centuries of rebuilding, and two days that stay on foot inside the walls.
Think twice before: stacking outdoor afternoons back to back. Almost six November days record 0.39 inch of rain or more, and the light is gone by 5:16 p.m.
Normals: IPMA station 545, 1991-2020 · Perimeter: UNESCO file 1031bis · full sources at the end
On this page
- Average highs, lows and rain days62.2°F days and 13 wet days
- How cold the nights get48.9°F lows and what goes in the bag
- Crowds, prices and the lodging taxWhat we verified and what we could not
- Things to do on a wet afternoonThe castle, the monastic pole and the Couros quarter
- A two-day plan built around 9h55 of lightHour by hour, 7:21 a.m. to 5:16 p.m.
- Is October or December warmer?How the three months compare
- Should I shift the trip?Who November suits
One scope note first: the normals below are measured at Porto’s airport on the coast, at 67.7 m, while Guimarães sits inland, where summer afternoons run warmer and winter nights colder. Pack for the town, not for the runway, and our packing guide handles the rest of the suitcase.
Guimarães weather in November: average highs, lows and rain days
| November at station 545 | Value |
|---|---|
| Average high | 62.2°F |
| Average low | 48.9°F |
| Precipitation | 6.53 inches |
| Days with 0.04 in or more | 13.0 |
| Days with 0.39 in or more | 5.9 |
| Daylight on Nov 15 | 9 hr 55 min |
Every figure here comes from IPMA, Portugal’s national weather service, 1991-2020 normals, station 545 at Porto Pedras Rubras, altitude 67.7 m. That is a real thermometer in a real instrument shelter, not a reanalysis grid cell averaged over a square of landscape. It also stands on the coast, about 30 miles from Guimarães, so treat the daytime reading as a fair guide and the nighttime reading as the mild end of what the inland valley does.
Thirteen days in an average November record at least 0.04 inch of rain, roughly three days in seven, and 5.9 of them record 0.39 inch or more. Those are IPMA’s thresholds, not the 0.10-inch threshold American tables use, so the counts do not swap with the ones in a US almanac. A rain day is a day that caught rain, not a day of rain from dawn to dark.
Day to night the spread is 13.3°F, small enough that one warm layer covers both ends of the clock. A waterproof shell beats an umbrella in a town where the lanes funnel wind between stone walls, and shoes with real grip matter: polished granite paving underfoot plus six and a half inches of rain is a slippery combination on a slope.
On November 15 the sun rises at 7:21 a.m. and sets at 5:16 p.m. local time, giving 9 hours 55 minutes of daylight. Portugal is back on winter time by then, so the useful outdoor block ends mid-afternoon. Anything you want to photograph outdoors belongs before 4 p.m., and dinner arrives in the dark whether you planned it that way or not.
How warm is Guimarães in November?
The month averages 62.2°F by day and 48.9°F by night. That is 7.1°F cooler by day than October’s 69.3°F and 3.7°F warmer than December’s 58.5°F, with the nights following the same slide: 55.2°F in October, 48.9°F here, 45.7°F in December. November sits closer to December than the brochures suggest on paper, and closer to October in the hours you actually walk.
In practice, mornings want a fleece or a sweater under the shell, and afternoons often want the fleece off. Low-60s air with sun on granite is pleasant walking weather for three or four hours at a stretch. Low-60s air with rain on it is not, so the same bag needs a hat and a second pair of socks.
We could not verify a count of frost nights at this station, so we give none. The monthly average low of 48.9°F sits well clear of freezing, but the reading is coastal and Guimarães is inland, where clear November nights run colder than the airport records. Guimarães has no coast, and we hold no verified water temperature for the beaches west of it, so no swimming figure appears anywhere here.
How busy is Guimarães in November? Crowds, prices and the demand peak
We looked for a monthly occupancy series and a room-rate curve for Guimarães and found neither, so we crown no month cheap and no month expensive. What we can date is the weather and the light, and both turn here: 6.53 inches of rain, more than either neighboring month, and 9 hours 55 minutes of daylight at mid-month. Our sources also carry no verified event date for November, so we name no festival.
Without availability data we give no booking lead in weeks. The lever worth pulling is location instead: the protected area covers 38.2 hectares, with a 129.4-hectare buffer around it, which means a bed inside the perimeter turns a wet afternoon into a five-minute walk back rather than a drive. Our where-to-stay guide works through the choice of base for a Portugal trip.
We could not verify a municipal lodging tax for Guimarães, so we quote no nightly amount and no percentage. Ask at check-in, and treat any figure you read elsewhere as unchecked by us. For what a week in the country adds up to, the Portugal trip-cost guide carries the arithmetic.
Paying up changes exactly one thing in a 13-rain-day month: the distance between your door and dinner. Beyond that, the connection matters more than the room. Guimarães sits in the north within easy reach of Porto and Braga, and trains and buses in Portugal plus our car guide cover how you arrive.
Things to do in Guimarães in November
At 62.2°F you can walk a granite town for four straight hours without the heat or the cold ending the day for you. The whole inscribed area is 38.2 hectares, small enough to cross several times in a morning, which is the part November makes comfortable and July does not.
Inside the walls, two poles anchor everything, both standing from between 950 and 1498: the castle to the north and the monastic complex to the south. Nineteen properties inside the perimeter carry legal protection, ten as National Monuments and nine of Public Interest. Outside the walls, the town grew around the Franciscan and Dominican complexes, and the Couros quarter keeps its tanneries and workers’ houses from the 19th and early 20th centuries. We verified no opening hour and no admission price for the castle, the palace or any monument here, so we quote none: check each operator before you walk up.
The stone does not change with the season. The air does, and that is the whole difference: 62.2°F afternoons instead of October’s 69.3°F, and 5.9 days heavy enough to push you under a roof. Granite ground floors carrying half-timbered stories above, a technique developed in the Middle Ages here that traveled with the Portuguese to Africa and the New World, look their part when the facades are wet.
The free part is the town itself. Public spaces belong to the municipality while most of the building stock is privately owned, so the squares laid out between 1498 and 1693, and the medieval street plan they were dropped into, cost nothing at any hour. That is the hedge against a wet afternoon: the walk is always available, even when a ticket desk is closed.
Guimarães in November: a two-day itinerary
Day one, with sunrise at 7:21 a.m.: coffee at 8:30, the castle end of the walled town at 9 while the streets are empty, the monastic pole to the south by 11, lunch at 1. Take the Couros quarter at 2:30, when the afternoon is at its 62.2°F best, and be back inside the walls by 4:15 for the squares. Everything outdoors is finished before the 5:16 p.m. sunset, which leaves the evening to dinner.
Day two goes slower: the 19 protected properties, the ones open on the day, then the streets between them. If the sky turns, and 5.9 November days say it may, invert the order. Interiors in the morning, the outdoor loop in whatever dry window the afternoon gives, and the squares last. Rain here falls in a town measuring 38.2 hectares, so shelter is never more than a few minutes away.
Guimarães in November vs October and December
| Measure | October | November | December |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average high | 69.3°F | 62.2°F | 58.5°F |
| Average low | 55.2°F | 48.9°F | 45.7°F |
| Precipitation | 5.86 in | 6.53 in | 6.04 in |
| Days with 0.04 in or more | 11.1 | 13.0 | 12.4 |
November lands 7.1°F below October and 3.7°F above December on the daytime average, and 6.3°F below October on the nights. It is also the wettest of the three on both counts: 6.53 inches against October’s 5.86 and December’s 6.04, and 13.0 wet days against 11.1 and 12.4. Guimarães is inland, so none of these months offers a swimming number, and we give none.
Shifting back four weeks to October buys the warmest afternoons of the three and nearly two fewer wet days, at the cost of longer queues in a town that squeezes its visitors into 38.2 hectares. Shifting forward to December costs another 3.7°F by day and gains almost nothing on the rain. Our October page and the December one run the same numbers for each.
Is November a good time to visit Guimarães?
Yes if you came for the built town: 62.2°F walking weather, interiors as the default plan B, and a core small enough that rain costs you five minutes rather than an afternoon. No if your trip depends on long outdoor days or on pairing Guimarães with beaches or hill walking, because 13 wet days and a 5:16 p.m. sunset will edit that itinerary for you.
If the answer is no, shift to October rather than December. October gives 69.3°F days, 55.2°F nights and 11.1 wet days, all three better than November’s, while December moves in the wrong direction on temperature and barely improves the rain. The northern Portugal guide covers what else the region offers in that window.
Of the three months, only November puts afternoons in the low 60s together with a dusk early enough to be sitting at a table by 5:30, which is a particular kind of short, dense day.
The last word
Book the bed inside the walls, pack the shell rather than the umbrella, and let the thirteen wet days decide which mornings go indoors. One thing to check before you map anything: the inscribed boundary was significantly modified in 2023, so older maps do not match the 38.2 hectares protected now. UNESCO also flags the Couros quarter as needing an urgent conservation strategy and names tourism-driven gentrification as a pressure on it, worth knowing before you book a rental down there.
Sources & data for this guide
- November, October and December normals and rain-day counts · IPMA (Instituto Português do Mar e da Atmosfera), 1991-2020 normals, station 545 Porto Pedras Rubras, altitude 67.7 m · checked Sep 24, 2026
- Station caveat: the thermometer stands at Porto’s airport on the coast, while Guimarães lies inland with colder winter nights · IPMA · checked Sep 24, 2026
- Rain-day thresholds of 1 mm (0.04 in) and 10 mm (0.39 in) are IPMA’s own and do not match the 0.10-inch threshold used in US tables · checked Sep 24, 2026
- Daylight of 9 hr 55 min, sunrise 07:21 UTC and sunset 17:16 UTC on November 15, converted to local time · sunrise-sunset.org · checked Sep 24, 2026
- Perimeter of 38.2 ha, buffer of 129.4 ha, 2001 inscription under criteria (ii), (iii) and (iv), 2023 boundary modification, the 19 protected properties, the two medieval poles and the Couros quarter · UNESCO World Heritage file 1031bis · checked Sep 24, 2026
- We found no opening hour and no admission price for the castle, the palace or any other Guimarães monument, so we quote none · check each operator before you go
- We could not verify a municipal lodging tax, an occupancy series or a monthly room-rate curve for Guimarães, so we rank no month on price
- We found no verified event date for November in Guimarães, so we name no festival