Nestling among vineyards and olive and cork trees, Azeitão is a pretty little town situated on the old road between Lisbon and the port city of Setúbal at the foot of the Arrábida mountains just 40 km south of the Portuguese capital.
Located on a 1,075-metre-high plateau on the north-east flank of the Estrela mountains in central Portugal, Guarda is a city of great historic interest and the highest place in the country.
The year 1942 was a very turbulent one but it did spawn one of the world’s most iconic and popular table wines.
One of the most memorable times to be visiting Portugal is late winter/early spring when the country explodes into a frenzy of song and dance as the annual carnival season gets underway.
Blessed with a prime location on Europe’s south-west coast, Portugal offers visitors a great variety of leisure options with a wide range of sports activities to match, not to mention a temperate climate with plenty of year-round sunshine.
When King Manuel II sailed off into the sunset on the 5th of October 1910, it marked the end of the Portuguese monarchy.
Once a rich and powerful city, Silves today is a sleepy town lying in the foothills of the Serra de Monchique mountains in the western Algarve.
The Portuguese have a very strong attachment to their beliefs, customs and capabilities, which thankfully means that Portugal’s traditional art of handicrafts hasn’t been discarded as a result of the country’s rapid modernisation since the 1974 revolution.
The Phoenicians first brought olive trees across the Mediterranean to Portugal and the Romans were successful in cultivating the groves and pressing the olives to attain the precious oil.
One of the most legendary and influential figures of Portugal’s long and chequered history is Afonso Henriques, the country’s first king.
Regularly spotted in Portugal, the red kite (milvus milvus) is one of the world’s most acrobatic birds of prey and a formidable sight with its reddish-brown body, angled wings and deeply forked tail.
Roughly rectangular in shape and with a population of around ten million people, Portugal has much to offer the modern visitor – young and old alike.