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.
Besides being a strong, independently-minded woman back in the middle of the seventeenth century, Josefa de Óbidos (1630-84) over almost four decades created some of the most attractive and instantly recognisable paintings in the history of Portuguese art.
A most prominent landmark in the Tagus Estuary is the Forte do Bugio lighthouse strategically set approximately 2.5 kilometres offshore at the mouth of the river.
With as many as 260 million speakers around the world, the majority of whom are native speakers, Portuguese is by far the most widely spoken Romance language after Spanish.
The Berlengas form an archipelago of extraordinary red rock formations located twelve kilometres off the coast of Peniche in central Portugal.
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.
Having existed as a country for almost nine centuries, Portugal is one of the oldest places in Europe with strong traces of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic culture to be seen across the land.