Anta Grande do Zambujeiro

The Great Dolmen of Zambujeiro, near Évora, is the largest megalithic tomb in the Iberian Peninsula: seven granite pillars up to six metres high once held a chamber buried under a mound more than fifty metres across, with a corridor of sixteen stones stretching towards the rising sun. Built between six and five thousand years ago, it is older than the pyramids of Egypt.

The giant of the Évora megaliths

The dolmen belongs to the extraordinary megalithic landscape around Évora — the same culture that raised the Cromeleque dos Almendres, the largest stone circle in the peninsula, a few kilometres away. Excavated in the 1960s, Zambujeiro yielded necklaces, schist idols, copper tools and decorated vessels that are now in the museum of Évora; its huge menhir, covered in cup marks, lies fallen at the entrance, and the broken capstone of the chamber rests where it fell. A protective metal shell now shields the stones from the weather, and in 2020 the monument received a special protection zone that covers the surrounding fields — the dolmen standing alone in farmland, as it has for five millennia.

What to see

• The seven giant pillars of the chamber
• The corridor of sixteen standing stones
• The fallen menhir with its cup marks
• The mound in which the tomb was buried
• The megalithic landscape all around Évora

Practical information

The dolmen stands near Valverde, about 12 kilometres from Évora by the road to Montemor-o-Novo. It is a National Monument, free to visit and signposted from Valverde; the visit takes fifteen minutes. Combine it with the Almendres stone circle and the Anta Grande da Comenda da Igreja for a full megalithic afternoon.

Image credit: Anta Grande do Zambujeiro by John Atherton — CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.