It was then that the Countess Mumadona Dias, widow of Hermenegildo Mendes had built a monastery, which has become a pole of attraction and led to the establishment of a population group. For its defense of the cluster, Mumadona built a castle nearby, on the hill, thus creating a second attachment point. Connecting the two nuclei formed on the Rua de Santa Maria.
Later the monastery was turned into a house and acquired great importance due to the privileges and donations that kings and nobles were granted.
It became a famous center for pilgrimage, and believers everywhere flocked with prayers and promises. The town has been expanding and organizing, and then surrounded by a defensive wall. But the mendicant orders settled in Guimarães and help shaping the city.
Later, the two poles merge into a single and after the fifteenth century the city within the walls had been established. Will also be constructed of some churches, convents and palaces, the formation of the Largo da Misericordia (now Square John Franco) in the late seventeenth century and early eighteenth, but its structure not be significantly altered.Will be from the late nineteenth century, the new ideas of urban hygiene and symmetry, the village, a city in 1853 by Queen Mary II, will undergo major change. Will be authorized and encouraged the overthrow of the walls will be built the Largo do Carmo (today Martins Sarmento Largo) and Countess of Juncal, there will be the opening of streets and avenues and later parquização Hill Foundation and the Alameda. However, almost everything was done in a controlled manner, thus allowing the preservation of its historic town center