Prince Henry's promontory at Sagres

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In Sagres, in the municipality of Vila do Bispo, the fortress stands on the Sagres promontory, a strategic point for controlling shipping between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and its founding in the 15th century is associated with Prince Henry the Navigator, whose presence here is historically documented and who died in Sagres in 1460. The history of the place is bound up with the Promontorium Sacrum, a region mentioned since ancient times. The Igreja do Corvo once stood here, where the relics of Saint Vincent were kept in a shrine that drew many pilgrims until the 12th century, when Afonso Henriques had them taken to Lisbon. Of the original Henrician wall only traces remain. The first bastions were ordered by King Sebastião in 1573 and appear in the drawing made during Francis Drake's attack in 1587, and the present bastioned fortress was only built after the ruin caused by the 1755 earthquake. Inside, the church of Nossa Senhora da Graça probably replaced, around 1570, the church of Santa Maria that Prince Henry had built in 1459, and the cistern tower was probably built in his time, between 1443 and 1460. The most enigmatic feature is the so-called wind rose: 48 lines of stones laid out radially in a circular yard 50 metres across, unearthed in 1919 and long linked to a nautical school allegedly founded here by Prince Henry. Another theory sees it as a monumental gnomon, or sundial, built in the 16th century. The fortress lost its military role at the start of the 20th century and was restored in the 1960s, for the 500th anniversary of Prince Henry's death, and again in the 1990s. From it there is a wide view over the Mareta bay and Cape St Vincent.

Craft beer in Sagres is still a rare find, so it is worth asking locally before you set out.