Monsaraz

Overview

Monsaraz is a walled village of slate and whitewash on the highest hill above the Guadiana, on the Spanish border east of Évora, with under 800 people, a castle at one end, a church in the middle and two streets between; since the Alqueva dam filled in 2010 it looks down on the largest artificial lake in Western Europe. Its name comes from the Arabic for the gum rockrose that covers the poor slate soil around it.

The village is a place to walk the walls, look at the water and sleep; the countryside around is dotted with dolmens, menhirs and the Xerez cromlech, among the densest megalithic landscapes in Iberia.

History

The hill was a prehistoric castro and then Roman, Visigothic, Moorish, Mozarab and Jewish before it was Christian; Geraldo Sem Pavor took the castle in 1167 on the expedition that had just taken Évora, the Moors took it back, and Sancho II with the Templars retook it for good in 1232, giving it to the order to garrison the frontier. By 1263 it was an important fortress and the head of a municipality with wide privileges, living on farming, livestock, earthenware and hammered copper.

After 1385 it passed to Nuno Álvares Pereira and so to the House of Braganza; Manuel I gave it a new charter in 1512, the duke settled small plots around it after the plague in 1527, and in 1640 the castle got a new bastion to link it to the border chain of Elvas, Juromenha, Olivença and Mourão. The village backed the wrong side in the Liberal Wars, and in 1838 the municipal seat moved down the hill to Reguengos, permanently from 1851, which is why Monsaraz stopped growing and stayed as it was.

Visiting

Enter by the main gate and walk the Rua Direita between the two-storey houses to the pillory and the Paços da Audiência, the old court with its 15th-century fresco of justice; the parish church of Nossa Senhora da Lagoa, rebuilt after the earthquake, and the Misericórdia are beside it. The castle at the far end has a bullring inside its walls and a wall-walk with the whole of the Alqueva lake below and Spain across it.

Outside the walls, the megaliths are within a few kilometres: the Xerez cromlech, moved from its original site when the reservoir rose, the Bulhoa and Outeiro menhirs, the Olival da Pega dolmen and the Rocha dos Namorados, the lovers’ rock where girls threw stones to learn when they would marry; the São Bento chapel with its painted vault and the ruined watchtower of São Gens from 1646, built to watch the river, are on the same roads.

Tips

• Stay overnight; the coaches leave and the village at dusk, with the lake turning silver, is its own reward.
• Rede Expressos and Rodoviária do Alentejo buses reach Reguengos from Lisbon and Évora, but the last leg to the hill needs a taxi or a car.
• The Alqueva beaches and boat trips are at Monsaraz’s own river beach below the village and at Mourão across the water.
• Reguengos is the wine town; the cooperative and the estates around it sell the reds the village restaurants pour.

Nearby

• Xerez cromlech: 2 km.
• Reguengos de Monsaraz: 17 km west.
• Mourão and its castle: across the lake.
• Évora: 55 km west.