Landmark, Museum sights in Portugal

1. Cabo de São Vicente

   • Sagres, Portugal
   • Sights › Landmark, museum

   A trip to Cabo de São Vicente (Cape St Vincent), Europe’s southwesternmost point, is a must. At sunset you can almost hear the hissing as the sun hits the sea. This barren, thrusting headland is the bleak last piece of home that nervous Portuguese sailors would have seen as they launched into the unknown.

   The cape – a revered place even in the time of the Phoenicians and known to the Romans as Promontorium Sacrum – takes its present name from a Spanish priest martyred by the Romans. The old fortifications, trashed by Sir Francis Drake in 1587, were later pulverised by the 1755 earthquake.

   At the end of the cape there’s a wind-whipped red lighthouse (hundreds of…

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