Xelb, the red castle city: Silves

2 breweries · 0 venues

Silves grew up beside the River Arade, and the council traces human presence here back to prehistoric times, with Neolithic standing stones such as the menhirs of Monte Roma. Muslim rule, from the 8th to the 13th century, left the deepest mark on the city: as Xelb, it became an important cultural and political centre of al-Gharb al-Andalus, remembered as the city of philosophers and poets such as Ibn Ammar and King Al-Mutamid. The first Christian conquest came in 1189, when Portuguese troops under Sancho I were helped by crusaders bound for the Holy Land, but it lasted only two years. The final conquest came in the mid-13th century; Afonso III soon appointed a bishop, and the city became the capital of the whole Algarve. Its castle, the old citadel of Islamic Xelb, is one of the most remarkable works of military architecture built in Portugal during Muslim rule, first mentioned in the 10th century. Its rammed-earth walls faced with red Silves sandstone link eleven towers, and inside are the ruins of an Almohad palace and a large cistern, the Aljibe, which supplied water to the town until the 1990s and is linked to the legend of the Enchanted Moorish Girl. A National Monument since 1910, the castle was heavily restored in the 1940s. In the 15th century Prince Henry drew the townspeople into the Portuguese voyages of discovery, but from the 16th century the silting of the river brought decline; the bishop moved to Faro in 1577, and the 1755 earthquake left little more than a dozen houses standing. The cork industry and the railway revived the city from the late 19th century, and today the municipality is known as Portugal's leading orange-growing area.

For a town steeped in so much history, Silves also holds a small surprise for beer lovers: 2 breweries brewing locally. It is a rare find in this corner of the Algarve, and the kind of place where you might get to meet the people behind the beer.