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Lagos
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AlgarveRealty.com - Tel: +351 282 443 163 Fax: +351 282 442 349 Email: mike.sargent@mail.telepac.pt The Website for M H Sargent Soc. De Mediação Imobiliária Lda Rua 25 de Abril 7 - Silves 8300-184 Portugal Lic. N° 360-AMI © Richard Lovejoy 2002 |
where you will find a variety of shops and cafes. At it’s meeting with the Rua das Portas de Portugal is the substantial indoor market that has recently undergoing complete refurbishment. Several streets behind the market have been pedestrianised, so that you can wander at leisure. Further along the Avenda is the Praça de República, which provides a good spot to view the once impregnable walls of the town. Lacobriga was the ancient Roman name for the town and some fragments of the original Roman wall still stand, much expanded and rebuilt over the centuries and now restored. During the 8th century the defence was no barrier to the great Moslem invasion. The Moors rebuilt the harbour and the town gained in importance. In 1250 Lagos was taken by the Portuguese kings and as a result of its new-found sovereignty prospered once more through
the 15th and 16th centuries, the period of the great discoveries. The governor’s palace was the headquarters for Henry the Navigator, son of King Joao 1, who founded his “School of Navigation” to teach sailors to navigate when land was not in sight. He managed to prove that there was land or sea beyond the horizon and that boats were not going to "drop off the end of the world". He also founded a shipyard in the town from where his Portuguese navigators started their journeys. A statue of the prince was set up in the square, Praça do Infante, where he can be seen seated with a sextant in hand and looking directly across the harbour. The plaza has been laid with calçada paving in a design representing the waves. There remains a continuing debate over the exact 
whereabouts of Henry’s “School of Navigation”, but is seems almost certain that Lagos was the principal shipyard and port from where his team of explorers set sail. Nevertheless, there is a museum of his teachings between Lagos and Sagres. Henry died in 1460 and was buried in the church of Santa Maria in Lagos. As a consequence of the new African trade that emanated along the west coast in the middle of the 15th century Portugal’s only slave trade was established. Lagos became the main port for this new-found commerce and provided Europe’s slave market in the unmarked arcade alongside the old Customs House. The trade was abolished as late as the second half of the 19th Century. The devastating
earthquake, which struck Portugal in 1755, almost destroyed the town. It lost its castle, all its churches and the palace in which Henry the Navigator had lived in the 15th century. One survivor of this time is the altar of the Igreja de Santo António, (Chapel of St. Anthony), which was re-built in 1769. There are no pews in the church now, the flagstone floor left bare to allow visitors to admire the incredibly ornate interior. Both the altar and the church are richly decorated with carved and guilded figures of cherubs and animals that are said to be the most beautiful in the Algarve, if not Portugal. The lower parts of the walls are covered with 18th century tiles. Set in the floor is the tomb of Irishman, Hugh Beaty who commanded the Lagos army in the late 18th century. There are also eight large paintings on the walls, each one depicts a miracle performed by St Anthony during his life in Italy.
Two kilometres from the town centre is the wonderfully shaped headland of Ponta da Piedade, (Point of Piety), where a lighthouse sits with palm trees and from where steps, cut into the cliff face, lead all the way down to the sea.
Some of the best beaches in the Algarve can be found around Lagos but even in the height of summer there is plenty of space. Like most of the coastal towns it has its fair share of excellent restaurants scattered around the cobbled streets of this popular town.