Algarve: Heritage and History from the Garb al-Andalus to the 21st Century

The Algarve is the southernmost region of mainland Portugal, corresponding to the district of Faro and its sixteen municipalities. Its name preserves the memory of five centuries of Islamic presence: it derives from the Arabic al-Gharb, “the west”, because it was the westernmost edge of the Muslim world. This layering of cultures — Phoenician, Roman, Visigothic, Islamic and Christian — made the territory one of the densest archives of heritage in the country, where red sandstone castles stand alongside Baroque churches and coastal fortresses.

From al-Andalus to the Christian conquest

Before it was the Algarve, the region was Ossonoba, Lacobriga and Balsa — the Roman names of cities that prospered on the trade in garum and salt. With the arrival of the Muslims in the early eighth century, the south became the Garb al-Andalus, and cities such as Silves (Xelb), Faro, Tavira and Loulé flourished as cultured and prosperous urban centres. Silves even became the capital of an independent taifa in the eleventh century, and its red sandstone castle remains the most imposing testimony of that period, with its Almohad cistern and almost intact walled perimeter.

The Christian conquest was slow and hard-fought, advancing from west to east over the course of the thirteenth century. It was completed only in 1249, during the reign of King Afonso III, who took Faro and made the “Kingdom of the Algarve” the last mainland territory incorporated into the crown — a fact that still echoes in the historic title of the Portuguese monarchs, “King of Portugal and of the Algarves”.

More than a backdrop of beaches, the Algarve is a civilisational frontier: the line where the Islamic Mediterranean and the Christian Atlantic met and overlapped in stone.

Historic towns and coastal fortifications

The geography of the Algarve shaped its heritage. The coastal strip, exposed to corsairs and fleets, became dotted with bastioned fortifications and garrison forts — from Sagres to Castro Marim, beside the mouth of the Guadiana. Tavira preserves its bridge over the Gilão and a townscape studded with four-sided rooftops; Lagos was a decisive port in the age of the Discoveries, the point of departure for the voyages launched by Prince Henry. Faro, the capital since the 1755 earthquake, encloses its cathedral and old quarter within walls of medieval origin, above the remains of ancient Ossonoba — an example of the Roman archaeology that surfaces throughout the south.

The earthquake of 1 November 1755, of a magnitude close to 9, devastated much of the Algarve’s settlements and marked a turning point in their urban history. The eighteenth-century reconstruction gave the region much of its present character, from the late Baroque of its churches to the orthogonal grid of Vila Real de Santo António, laid out according to principles akin to those of the Pombaline city.

Exploring the Algarve’s heritage