São Brás de Alportel

• Historic Town
• Traditional
• Crafts
• Culture
• History
• €€

São Brás de Alportel sits in the hills behind Faro, where the limestone Barrocal meets the cork oak country of the Serra do Caldeirão, and cork is the town's story. A century ago this was one of the great centres of the world cork trade, and the industry never left: factories around the town still prepare and work the bark, and the surrounding hills are covered in cork oaks numbered in white paint. The town wears the prosperity of that era in its architecture, and tells the wider story in the Museu do Trajo, the costume museum, one of the eastern Algarve's best small museums. A weekly market is held on Saturday mornings, and the Calçadinha, a preserved stretch of Roman road, runs out of the town centre towards Faro. The Via Algarviana, the long-distance trail that crosses the Algarve, passes through, and the walking north into the serra is some of the best in the region. The bishops of the Algarve once kept their summer residence here, which says something about the air. São Brás suits people who want the working inland Algarve: real shops, real seasons, and the coast twenty minutes away.