Inside Portugal’s 19th-century goat tower, where dwarf goats climb a spiral ramp

19th-century goat tower PC: Wikipedia At Quinta da Aveleda, a historic wine estate in Portugal's Vinho Verde region near Penafiel, a three-storey stone tower stands among the property's romantic gardens, built not for people but for goats. Known as the Torre das Cabras, or Tower of the Goats, it was constructed in the late 19th century by Fernando Guedes da Silva da Fonseca, a member of the family that has owned the estate since the 17th century. Rather than leaving the estate's dwarf goats to graze on flat ground, the family built them a miniature mountain instead, complete with a wooden ramp spiralling around the outside so the animals could climb from the ground floor to the top.Why the Aveleda family built their goats a tower instead of a fieldQuinta da Aveleda was founded as a wine-producing estate in 1870 by Manoel Pedro Guedes, though the family's connection to the property stretches back to the 17th century. According to accounts of the estate's history published by the family, the Torre das Cabras was conceived as an ode to nature and to earlier generations of the Aveleda family, a three-storey structure built specifically to house dwarf goats within the estate's gardens. ...