Monsaraz is one of Portugal's most beautiful villages: a fortified hilltop settlement with two main streets paved in schist, white houses, a church and a castle, with views over the Alentejo plains, Spain and the waters of Lake Alqueva. It belongs to the municipality of Reguengos de Monsaraz, in the district of Évora, and has only a few dozen permanent residents.
The village and the castle
You enter through the Porta da Vila and walk along Rua Direita, with sixteenth and seventeenth-century houses, an eighteenth-century pillory and the mother church of Nossa Senhora da Lagoa. In the small fresco museum, in the old courthouse, is a fifteenth-century fresco of the "good and bad judge". At the far end of the village, the fourteenth-century castle has an unusual feature: inside its walls is a bullring, still used during festivals. From the walls the view, especially at sunset, is unforgettable.
Lake Alqueva
At the foot of the hill stretches the lake created by the Alqueva dam on the Guadiana, completed in 2002: with a surface of about 250 square kilometres, it is the largest artificial lake in Western Europe. You can take a boat or houseboat, swim at the Monsaraz river beach or kayak. Its creation drowned the old village of Luz, rebuilt higher up.
Menhirs and stars
The area is rich in megalithic monuments: the Outeiro menhir, over five metres tall, the Bulhoa menhir and the Xerez cromlech, moved near the Orada convent to save it from the rising waters. The Alqueva area was the first in the world to be certified as a Starlight Tourism Destination, thanks to its particularly dark skies: the Dark Sky Alqueva network runs night-time stargazing sessions.
Wine and pottery
Reguengos de Monsaraz is one of the Alentejo's leading wine centres, with large wineries and small estates to visit. In the village of São Pedro do Corval, a few kilometres away, dozens of workshops make hand-painted pottery: it is considered the largest pottery centre in the country. Monsaraz is about 50 minutes by car from Évora.