Alentejo

Overview

The Alentejo is the third of Portugal that almost nobody lives in. The name means “beyond the Tagus”, and the region runs from the south bank of that river to the hills above the Algarve, and from the Atlantic to Spain; it holds three districts, Évora, Beja and Portalegre, plus the coastal strip, and is the most sparsely populated part of the country. What fills the space is the montado, an open woodland of cork and holm oaks over wheat and pasture, and it changes colour through the year, green in winter, wildflowers in spring, and the straw yellow that gives the plains around Castro Verde their local name, the Campo Branco.

The towns are small, white, and on hills. Évora, the regional capital, has a Roman temple, a bone chapel and a walled centre that has been a World Heritage site since 1986; Elvas, on the Spanish border, is the largest set of star-fort defences in the world and was listed in 2012; Marvão, Monsaraz and Mértola are hilltop villages of a few hundred people each, one on a crag, one above Europe’s largest reservoir, one on the Guadiana with a mosque still standing inside its church. The coast is a separate proposition: 100 km of cliffs and near-empty beaches from Tróia to the Algarve line, most of it inside a natural park, with a long-distance footpath along the top.

It is the hottest region in the country in summer, the slowest in pace, and the one where a hire car is not optional. Évora is an easy day from Lisbon; the rest rewards three or four nights and a loop.

History & character

Stones, Romans and Moors

The plains around Évora hold one of the densest concentrations of megalithic monuments in Europe: the Almendres Cromlech, the largest group of standing stones in the Iberian peninsula, sits in a cork wood 15 km west of the city, and the Great Dolmen of Zambujeiro near Valverde is one of the biggest chambered tombs in Iberia. Rome took Évora in 57 BC and walled it; the Corinthian temple in the centre dates from the 1st century AD, and Beja was Pax Julia, a provincial centre in its own right.

The Moors arrived in 715 and stayed more than four centuries, and the Alentejo kept more of them than anywhere else in Portugal. Mértola’s parish church is the country’s only surviving medieval mosque, 12th-century, with horseshoe-arched portals still on the outside; Marvão takes its name from Ibn Marwan, the 9th-century rebel who built its castle as the base of a breakaway state; Évora fell to the Portuguese in the 1160s, Mértola not until 1238.

Court, border and Braganza

Évora was a court city under the Aviz kings, who spent long periods here in the 15th and 16th centuries and left it the palaces, the university of 1559 and the workshops of the sculptor Nicolau Chanterene. The Dukes of Braganza built their palace at Vila Viçosa, and when they took the throne in 1640 the town became the family seat of the dynasty that ruled until 1910. The border with Spain was the reason for everything else: Elvas, 8 km from Badajoz, was rebuilt from the 17th century into the most complete example of star-fort engineering anywhere, with outlying forts at Santa Luzia and Nossa Senhora da Graça and an aqueduct begun in 1537 to keep it in water through a siege.

The latifúndio and the song

The Alentejo’s character comes from the land. It is a country of large estates, cork, olives, wheat and grazing, thinly peopled and slow, and the accent, the pace of speech and the habit of the long lunch all follow from that. Out of the same fields came cante alentejano, unaccompanied choral singing by groups of men or women, slow and in close harmony, which UNESCO listed as intangible heritage in 2014, one of only two Portuguese musical traditions on the list with fado.

Évora will be a European Capital of Culture in 2027, shared with Liepāja in Latvia, which is the first time the region has been given a stage of that size.

See & do

Évora’s centre

Everything in Évora is inside the walls and within ten minutes of the Praça do Giraldo, the square where the city meets itself. The Roman temple, a Corinthian colonnade on its granite podium in the highest square, survived because it was walled into the medieval castle and used as a butcher’s shop until 1836; it stands next to the cathedral, begun in 1186 and listed by UNESCO in 1988, whose roof you can climb for a view over the plain. Between them the Frei Manuel do Cenáculo museum, in the old bishop’s palace, holds 20,000 pieces from Roman finds to Flemish painting. Downhill, beside the church of St Francis, the Capela dos Ossos has walls and pillars faced entirely with human skulls and long bones; it is small, and the queue in summer is the longest in town.

The megaliths

The Almendres Cromlech is a 15-minute drive west of Évora: nearly a hundred standing stones on a hillside above the village of Guadalupe, free to walk among at any hour, and best at the end of the day when the cork oaks throw long shadows. The Zambujeiro dolmen is another ten minutes south near Valverde; the Wikivoyage estimate of more than a thousand megalithic sites in the region is not an exaggeration, and Monsaraz has its own cluster of menhirs and dolmens signposted from the road.

Castles on the border

Marvão is the one to see if you see only one: a walled village on a quartzite crag in the Serra de São Mamede, with a castle at the top from which, as Saramago put it, you can see the whole land. Castelo de Vide, with its judiaria, is 10 km away, and the ruins of Roman Ammaia lie in the valley below Marvão at São Salvador da Aramenha. Elvas, further south, is a working town of 16,000 inside its bastions; the aqueduct arriving from the west and the fort of Nossa Senhora da Graça on the hill to the north are the two views to find.

Palaces, marble and the Guadiana

The Ducal Palace at Vila Viçosa, 150 km east of Lisbon, is the Braganza house-museum, a long three-storey block on a marble-paved square, with halls lined in 17th-century azulejos and fresco ceilings, and the family’s chapel, library and kitchens on the tour. Vila Viçosa, Borba and Estremoz are the three marble towns, quarried since Roman times; door frames, pavements and the castle keep at Estremoz are all cut from it. In the south, Mértola is a museum-town: the mosque-church, a castle above the Guadiana, and a set of small archaeological collections spread through the streets whose Islamic art is the most important in Portugal. Beja has a 13th-century castle keep with a military museum, the Visigothic church of Santo Amaro, one of four pre-Romanesque churches left in the country, and the regional museum in the convent of Nossa Senhora da Conceição.

The coast and the trails

The Rota Vicentina is the reason to come to the Alentejo coast on foot. The Fishermen’s Trail follows the cliff tops from São Torpes near Sines to Lagos in the Algarve, 226 km in 13 stages on sandy paths, and the Historical Way runs inland for 263 km from Santiago do Cacém to Cape St Vincent; both are waymarked, and the Historical Way has twice been certified as a Leading Quality Trail by the European Ramblers’ Association. Vila Nova de Milfontes, on the Mira estuary, and Zambujeira do Mar are the two villages to base in, and the Sudoeste festival, held every August near Zambujeira since 1997, is one of the largest rock festivals in Europe.

Towns & cities

Évora

Évora has 54,000 people, a university that gives it a younger crowd than any other town in the region, and a centre small enough to walk end to end in twenty minutes. The university, founded by Cardinal Henrique in 1559 and run by the Jesuits until Pombal closed it in 1779, occupies a former convent whose tiled cloister you can visit. The Jardim Público at the bottom of the town is where families walk in the evening, the Rua 5 de Outubro between the Giraldo and the cathedral is the souvenir street (cork, honey, olives, sheepskin slippers), and the Saturday farmers’ market on the Praça 1º de Maio runs from 06:00 to 13:00. It is the obvious base for the whole northern half of the region.

Beja and the Baixo Alentejo

Beja is the capital of the south, a district town of 33,000 on a low rise in the wheat plain, with the keep, the Visigothic church and the convent museum described above and a reputation as the hottest city in Portugal. Around it are the towns that make the food: Serpa, near the Guadiana, gives its name to the PDO ewe’s-milk cheese; Vidigueira has the Roman villa of São Cucufate and is wine country; Moura’s parish of Amareleja holds the national temperature record, 47.4 °C on 1 August 2003. Castro Verde, south-west of Beja, is the centre of the Campo Branco, a protected steppe where great bustards and lesser kestrels breed.

Portalegre and the Alto Alentejo

Portalegre, the third district capital, sits under the Serra de São Mamede and is the main town of the Alto Alentejo; its one museum to seek out is the house of the poet José Régio, who lived here from 1929 to 1962 and filled it with folk art and more than 400 images of Christ. It is the bus hub for Marvão and Castelo de Vide, and a practical rather than a pretty stop. Estremoz, between Évora and Elvas, is the biggest of the marble towns, taken from the Moors by Geraldo the Fearless in the 12th century, with a hilltop castle that is now a pousada; Elvas has hotels inside the walls and Badajoz, with its own old town and Spanish prices, across the border.

The coast

Sines is the working port, with a refinery and the main fishing harbour of the region, a castle, and a claim to be the birthplace of Vasco da Gama. Santiago do Cacém, inland, has the Roman town of Miróbriga, mentioned by Pliny, on a hill outside town. Comporta, at the northern end on the rice paddies of the Sado, has become the most expensive corner of the region, a summer colony of designers and architects that the press calls the Hamptons of Europe; the villages further south, Porto Covo, Milfontes and Zambujeira, are still fishing villages with surf schools. Odemira, the municipality that holds most of the southern coast, is the largest in Portugal by area and the one with the highest share of immigrants, most of them working the berry greenhouses that have spread along the coastal plain.

Alcácer do Sal, on the Sado estuary at the top of the region, is an old hill town with a castle that is now a pousada, and the road south from it passes through the Comporta rice fields.

Food & drink

Alentejo cooking is bread, pork, coriander and olive oil, and it is the cuisine that the rest of Portugal thinks of as its own comfort food. Açorda is the base: day-old bread soaked in garlic, coriander and oil, with a poached egg on top, somewhere between a soup and a porridge. Migas are the same bread fried in pork fat and served with pork ribs or belly. Carne de porco à alentejana, pork cubes marinated in wine, paprika and garlic, fried and finished with clams, is the dish every restaurant serves and the one to order where the pork is the black Alentejo pig, raised on acorns in the montado.

The wines are the country’s most popular reds: the whole region can use the Alentejano regional label and eight sub-regions the Alentejo DOC, and a few producers still ferment in the tall clay talhas the Romans used, a style you will see on lists as vinho de talha. The local spirit is medronho, distilled from the fruit of the strawberry tree in the hills, strong enough that it is sipped rather than drunk. Lunch is long; kitchens close between 15:00 and 19:00 in most towns, and a restaurant that is full of locals at 13:30 is the one to pick.

Nature

The montado is the landscape and the economy. Cork oaks are stripped every nine to twelve years once they reach 25, the bark left to regrow, and the numbers painted on the trunks are the year of the last harvest; the same open woodland raises the black pigs and shelters imperial eagles. South of Beja the trees thin out to the Campo Branco of Castro Verde, a Natura 2000 special protection area where great bustards, Europe’s heaviest flying birds, display in spring on the cereal steppe.

The Guadiana runs down the eastern edge. The Alqueva dam, finished in 2002 and full for the first time in 2010, created the largest artificial lake in Western Europe, 250 km² of water with Monsaraz on one shore and a new shoreline of beaches, boat hire and floating houses; below it the river enters the Guadiana Valley Natural Park and the gorge at Pulo do Lobo. In the north-east the Serra de São Mamede is the one range, a natural park of chestnut and oak with Marvão on its highest crag.

The reservoir has also become a power station twice over: besides the dam’s turbines it carries a floating solar farm of nearly 12,000 panels, a small dot on 250 km² of water.

Climate

The Alentejo has a Mediterranean climate with the Atlantic taken out of it. Summers are hot and dry, with 40 °C reached regularly inland and the national record of 47.4 °C set at Amareleja near Moura in August 2003; Évora’s own record is 45.4 °C, and Beja has had the hottest summers of any main city in the country. Average July and August highs are around 33 to 36 °C in the Guadiana valley and the Sado basin; the coast is a different world, with summer afternoons nearer 25 °C and a sea breeze that makes Milfontes feel like a different season from Beja on the same day.

Winters are mild and wet, with January highs around 14 °C in Beja and a handful of frosts a year on the plain; the Serra de São Mamede and the Marvão crag are noticeably colder. Rain falls between October and April and turns the plain green almost overnight; from June to September it does not rain at all in a normal year.

When to go

March to May and late September to November are the months. Spring is when the plain is green and then covered in wildflowers, the bustards are displaying at Castro Verde, and the temperatures are in the twenties; autumn has the grape harvest, the first rain and the chestnut fair at Marvão in early November. Both are quiet, and both are when the hilltop villages are a pleasure to walk up.

Summer is the coast’s season, and the only time the water is warm enough for most people; it is also festival season, with the Sudoeste rock festival in August at Zambujeira and Marvão’s classical music festival in July. Marvão’s Al-Mossassa festival of its Moorish past, held with Badajoz in early October, is the best reason to come to the border that month. Winter is cheap and empty and fine for Évora, Elvas and Mértola; the coast path is walkable but wet, and many coastal guesthouses close from November to March.

Getting there

There is no airport that matters. Beja’s, opened in 2011, is an air-force base with a civil terminal, and not something to plan a trip around; fly to Lisbon, 130 km from Évora by motorway, or to Faro for the south and the coast. By car the A6 leaves the Lisbon–Algarve A2 south of the Tagus and runs east through Évora, Estremoz and Elvas to Badajoz, where it becomes the Spanish A-5 to Madrid; the A2 itself is the spine of the western Alentejo, with exits for Alcácer, Grândola and the coast. Both motorways are tolled.

Trains reach Évora on a branch from Casa Branca on the Lisbon–Algarve line; the extension east to Elvas and the Spanish border is under construction and has been talked about as the country’s first high-speed link. The Linha do Alentejo from Barreiro, across the river from Lisbon, serves Beja and continues to Funcheira for the Algarve line, with a regional service rather than a fast one. Elvas sits on the old Lisbon–Badajoz–Madrid railway, but check current services before planning around it.

Getting around

Drive. Distances are large, the roads are empty and good, and the villages that make the region worth visiting have a bus a day or none. Évora to Monsaraz is an hour, Évora to Marvão two, Évora to Mértola two, Beja to the coast at Milfontes an hour and a half; a loop of Évora, Monsaraz, Vila Viçosa, Elvas, Marvão and back is about 400 km and fits comfortably into three days.

Without a car, base in Évora, which is walkable, has horse carriages by the cathedral for the lazy and a rail-trail, the Ecopista, for bikes, and use it for day trips. Rodoviária do Alentejo covers the northern half from Évora and Portalegre, Trimbal the south from Beja; for Marvão and Castelo de Vide you go via Portalegre, and most rural services run once or twice a day on school days only.

Fuel stations are far apart in the south-east; fill up in Beja or Évora before heading for Mértola or the Spanish border.

Practical info

Shops keep later hours than northern Europe, roughly 09:30 to 19:30 in Évora with a lunch break from 13:00 to 15:00 that small towns observe strictly; the Évora Plaza mall on the southern edge stays open through it. Bed and breakfasts and village houses are the accommodation, and the good ones in Évora and Monsaraz sell out in high season; the state pousada chain has houses in converted convents and castles across the region, and walking into one for a drink is an accepted way to see the public rooms.

Heat is the safety issue. Carry water, keep the car’s air-conditioning serviced, and treat any walk of more than an hour in July or August as an early-morning job. Fire risk is high in summer and rural roads are sometimes closed; do not park on dry grass. Crossing into Spain at Elvas or from Monsaraz, remember that Spain is an hour ahead and that Badajoz’s shops shut for siesta.

Cash is still expected in village cafés and at markets; ATMs are in every town but not every village. Mobile coverage is good on the main roads and patchy in the Guadiana valley and on the coast path. The tourist offices in Évora, Beja, Elvas and Marvão hand out the regional hiking and megalith maps that are otherwise hard to find, and the Rota Vicentina office publishes stage descriptions and a list of luggage-transfer operators for the coast.