monsaraz

With its colourful vistas, wide-open roads and dazzling whitewashed villages, the great expanse of the Alentejo is perhaps the most vivid of Portugal’s landscapes.

Perched high above the River Guadiana close to the frontier with Spain, the tiny medieval walled village of Monsaraz to the east of Évora is one of the most atmospheric places in the entire Alentejo region.

Boating in the Alentejo on Alqueva Lake, Europe’s largest reservoir, is an immensely pleasurable experience, but it’s the eeriest of feelings cruising leisurely over the top of a once-vibrant village now completely submerged by water.

Perhaps the most striking of all the marble towns in the Alentejo region, Vila Viçosa might be small in stature but it’s an immense place in the overall context of Portugal’s long and chequered history.

Closely associated with the beginning of the Portuguese monarchy, the national Gothic style is elegant and ethereal with strains of the Romanesque sobriety and austere grace seen in some of its earliest examples.

The country seat and preferred residence of the Dukes of Bragança (Portugal’s last ruling dynasty), Vila Viçosa’s Ducal Palace (Paço Ducal) once comprised more marble, azulejo tiles, tapestries and elaborate ironwork than any other noble edifice in the country.