Cacela Velha

Cacela Velha

Cacela Velha is barely a village at all: a hamlet of a few whitewashed houses on a low cliff at the eastern end of the Ria Formosa, in the municipality of Vila Real de Santo António. What it lacks in size it makes up in setting. An eighteenth-century fortress and a white parish church stand at the cliff edge, and below them the lagoon spreads out in bands of sand, water and shellfish beds, with the barrier beach beyond and the open Atlantic past that. This was a significant place long before Portugal existed: the site was fortified under the Moors, and the settlement has watched over this stretch of coast ever since. Today the hamlet holds a couple of restaurants known for oysters raised in the clear lagoon water below, and little else. The beach is reached from neighbouring Fábrica, by small boat across the channel in season or on foot at low tide. There is almost nowhere to stay and nothing to do after dark, and that is precisely the appeal. Cacela Velha suits a long oyster lunch, a swim off the sandbar, and one of the most photographed views in the eastern Algarve.