São Brás Alportel

São Brás de Alportel

The tranquil, unhurried lifestyle of the friendly local population. Streets of white houses whose ranks are broken only by the lofty outline of the church and its bell tower. The ring of hills around, the town that look out on the sea and the mountains. Such are the simple charms of São Brás de Alportel, a typical Algarve town.
Historical Centre
Low, white houses typical of popular architecture stand alongside more substantial buildings, their facades decorated with tiles, ornate stonework and cast iron verandas, whose opulence harks back to São Brás de Alportel's prosperity, in the years when the cork industry was booming. The high and low points of the towns changing fortunes are thus written in the stones of its streets and squares; while such details as the baroque mortar decoration of the Passo da Paixão (Stations of the Cross) near the Episcopal Palace and the pretty flower pots in the windows add colour and interest to their story.

Main Church
Built on the site of a church that probably dates back to the 15th century, the current structure was rebuilt after the earthquake of 1755. It was extended considerably in the 19th century. The interior is rather lacking in architectural interest. The chapel of Senhor dos Passos (Lord of the Stations of the Cross) contains gilded carvings in the taste of the second half of the 18th century and there are paintings from the 17th century depicting saints. Among the statues to be seen, those of the arcanjo São Miguel (Archangel Michael), São Libório (St. Liborius) and Santa Eufemia (St. Euphemia), dating from the 18th century are worth mentioning. The statues in the sacristy are from the same period. In the baptistery there is a neoclassical retable in marble. The churchyard is a good vantage point to admire the surrounding countryside and the sea.
Former Episcopal Palace
Built in the 17th/18th centuries for the bishops of the Algarve as a place of refuge from the summer heat, this building underwent several modifications in the 19th and 20th centuries which have altered its structure. What remains of the original palace today is part of the main building and, almost opposite it, a baroque vaulted fountain with eight spouts.

António Bentes Cultural Centre (Algarvean Costume Ethnographic Museum)
Located in what was once the home of a wealthy muleteer who grew rich in the cork trade, this building is a good example of bourgeois architecture at the end of the 19th century. In addition to an exhibition of the typical Algarvean costume worn in the 19th/20th centuries, there is also a collection of popular religious sculpture. The old farm buildings contain about twenty old vehicles once used in the Algarve, ranging from carriages and buggies that were the favoured mode of transport of the rich to mule carts and ox drawn wagons used by farmers and farm labourers. The museum also includes an exhibition of agricultural implements and tack and an area dedicated to cork and the cork industry.

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