Algarve: History

Pre-20th-Century History

British expats are following a long tradition of settlement. Phoenicians came to the Algarve first and established trading posts about 3000 years ago, followed by the Carthaginians. Next were the Romans, typically industrious during their 400-year stay - they grew wheat, barley and grapes and built roads and palaces (check out the remains at Milreu, near Faro).

Then came the Visigoths and, in 711, the North African Moors. They stayed 500 years, but later Christians obliterated as much as they could, leaving little trace of the era. However, many place names come from this time, easily spotted by the article 'al' (eg Albufeira, Aljezur, Alcoutim).

The Syrian Moors called the region in which they settled (east of Faro to Seville, Spain) al-Gharb al-Andalus (western Andalucía), which later became 'Algarve'. Another Arabic legacy is the flat-roofed house, originally used for drying almonds, figs and corn, and to escape from the night heat.

Trade boomed, particularly in nuts and dried fruit, and Silves was the mighty Moorish capital, quite independent of the large Muslim emirate to the east.

The Christian Reconquista began in the early 12th century, with the wealthy Algarve as the ultimate goal. Though Dom Sancho I captured Silves and territories to the west in 1189, the Moors returned. It was not until the first half of the 13th century that the Portuguese clawed their way back for good.

Modern History

Two centuries later the Algarve had its heyday. Prince Henry the Navigator chose the appropriately end-of-the-earth Sagres as the base for his school of navigation, and had ships built and staffed in Lagos for the 15th-century exploration of Africa and Asia - seafaring triumphs that turned Portugal into a major imperial power.

A city from 1540, Faro's brief golden age slunk to a halt in 1596, during Spanish rule. Troops under the Earl of Essex, en route to England from Spain in 1597, plundered the city, burned it and carried off hundreds of priceless theological works from the bishop's palace, now part of the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

Battered Faro was rebuilt, poking its head over the parapet only to be shattered by an earthquake in 1722 and then almost flattened in the 1755 big one. In 1834 it became the Algarve's capital.

Recent History

The Algarve coastline is 155km (96mi) long and consists of five main regions. The leeward coast (or Sotavento), from Vila Real de Santo António to Faro, is fronted by a chain of sandy offshore ilhas (islands). The central coast, from Faro to Portimão, features the heaviest resort development. The rocky windward coast (or Barlavento), from Lagos to Sagres, culminates in the wind-scoured grandeur of the Cabo de São Vicente. There's the hilly, green interior, which rises to two high mountain ranges, the Serra de Monchique and the less-visited Serra do Caldeirão, the Costa do Ouro (Golden Coast) which edges the Costa de Sagres (Bay of Sagres), and the Costa Vicentina, which stretches north from here.

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