Vila Real de Santo António

Vila Real de Santo António is unlike any other town in the Algarve: it was invented. After the 1755 earthquake, the Marquis of Pombal ordered a brand-new town to be raised on the Guadiana frontier, facing Spanish Ayamonte, and it was built in barely two years, with prefabricated stone elements and a grid of streets built to a single plan. The result is a rare Enlightenment town, square and bright, standing guard over the river mouth.

A town designed on a drawing board

The royal charter came at the end of 1773 and works were finished by 1776, on the site of the old fishing settlement of Santo António da Arenilha. Everything converges on the Praça Marquês de Pombal, a perfect square with an obelisk at its centre and the parish church facing it; the layout and the pombaline building system echo the rebuilt Baixa of Lisbon. Down by the river, the old quays still speak of the sardine and tuna trades that gave the town its living. The eastern Algarve rewards slow travelling: pair the town with the medieval hill and salt pans of nearby Cacela Velha, or with the old city of Tavira a little way west.

What to see

• Praça Marquês de Pombal and its obelisk
• The parish church of Nossa Senhora da Encarnação
• The riverside and the ferry crossing to Ayamonte
• The old fishing quarter and the harbour
• Monte Gordo’s long beach, minutes away

Practical information

Vila Real de Santo António sits at the far south-east corner of Portugal, on the Spanish border, about an hour by road from Faro. It is a natural base for the eastern Algarve and for crossing into Andalusia; the ferry to Ayamonte runs across the Guadiana in minutes.

Image credit: Vila Real de Santo António by Marc Ryckaert (MJJR) — CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.