Replica of La Pinta

Moored in Baiona's harbour is a full-scale replica of the Pinta, the caravel that carried the news of Columbus's first voyage back to Europe in 1493. The ship can be boarded for a small entrance fee and explored top to bottom — the cramped hold, the modest deck, the rigging.

It is a useful reality check on the scale of the original voyage. The Pinta was not a large vessel, and seeing how little space the crew had makes the Atlantic crossing feel more improbable and impressive than it does in textbooks. Allow thirty to forty minutes; there is a small exhibition on the Columbus voyages inside the hull.

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The original Pinta was a caravel of around 60 tonnes — by modern standards, barely large enough to cross an ocean. Standing on the deck of the replica, you begin to understand what it meant to spend months at sea in such a vessel. Columbus's crew of roughly 26 men slept on the open deck or in the hold, had no charts for the return route, and were within days of mutiny when the coast of the Bahamas finally appeared.