Inland Alentejo, from Évora to the ramparts of Marvão

Plains, white villages and castles

Alentejo means ‘beyond the Tagus’. You drive for mile after mile through cork oaks spaced out as if on a savannah — the montado. Every so often, a white town appears on a hilltop, with its castle. You park below the ramparts, walk up, then get back on the road.

In the south of the loop, Mértola looks down on the Guadiana, at the point where the river stops being navigable. Its church is a former 12th-century mosque, where you can still see the mihrab. On the road to Serpa, the São Domingos mine, worked by a British company from 1858 to 1966, left behind an acid lagoon and red earth.

To the east of the loop lies Lake Alqueva. The dam’s sluice gates were closed on 8 February 2002, and within eight years the reservoir had become the largest artificial lake in Western Europe. At night, people come here to watch the stars: in 2011, Dark Sky Alqueva became the world’s first Starlight Tourism Destination. Its observatory, at Cumeada near Monsaraz, is open to the public.

The main square bears the name of Geraldo Sem Pavor — Gerald the Fearless — who took the town from the Moors in 1165. In the church of São Francisco, the Chapel of Bones gives fair warning at the entrance: ‘We bones that are here are waiting for yours.’

About fifteen kilometres from the town, the Almendres Cromlech brings together some 95 granite monoliths, arranged in ellipses. It is the largest group of menhirs on the Iberian Peninsula. The earliest go back to the 6th millennium BC, long before Stonehenge, yet the site was only identified in 1964. The solar alignments credited to these stones are still debated. The stones look their best in the evening light.

The border castles

Inland Alentejo borders Spain: that is why it has so many castles. For centuries, these fortresses defended the border. Above the lake, Monsaraz is a fortified village of white houses. In its old courtroom, you can see a fresco painted around 1500: a good judge facing a two-faced one. Vila Viçosa is home to the palace of the Dukes of Braganza, who went on to become kings in 1640. It was from there that King Carlos I set out for Lisbon on 1 February 1908; he was assassinated there the same day.

Further north, facing Badajoz, Elvas is ringed by the world’s largest system of bastioned fortifications with dry ditches. Marvão sits high on a quartzite ridge, at more than 850 metres.

What not to miss

1. 1The Almendres CromlechAn ellipse of menhirs beneath the oaks, in the setting sun.
2. 2The Chapel of BonesThousands of skulls and bones, set in rows around 1600 on the initiative of three Franciscan friars.
3. 3The São Domingos mineAn acid lagoon, red spoil heaps and a miners’ village.
4. 4Monsaraz CastleA bullring inside the walls, and Lake Alqueva as far as the eye can see.
5. 5Marvão CastleA rampart walk along the quartzite ridge, looking out over Spain.
6. 6The synagogue of Castelo de VideOne of Portugal’s two medieval synagogues, in the heart of the judiaria, the old Jewish quarter.

Inland Alentejo in pictures

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The Almendres Cromlech: a single stone in the foreground, the ellipse of menhirs beneath the oaks.

The Alentejo’s table

Alentejo cooking does a great deal with very little: açorda, a bread soup with garlic and coriander in which an egg is poached, migas, lamb stew. The black pig, fattened on acorns, gives Barrancos ham; Serpa cheese is curdled with thistle flower.

Around Vidigueira, talha wine is still made in clay jars as in Roman times, and the jars are opened on St Martin’s Day. In the evening, in the taverns of Serpa, men sometimes strike up the cante alentejano, a polyphonic singing tradition inscribed by Unesco in 2014.