Alcoutim Castle
Local tips
Tickets cost €3.10 (€1.90 with a youth card or for over-65s) and are valid for a week, including the Museu do Rio in Guerreiros do Rio. Accompanied children under 14 go free. Entry is free on 18 April, 18 May, 12 August and the second Friday of September.
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Alcoutim
Alcoutim is a small town in the far north-east of the Algarve, on the bank of the Guadiana and directly opposite the Andalusian village of Sanlúcar de Guadiana. It grew up after the Treaty of Alcanizes (1297) made the river a border: King Dinis had the castle built around 1304, the year of the town charter, on a hill between the Guadiana and the Cadavais stream. In 1371 the kings of Portugal and Castile signed the Peace of Alcoutim here. From the castle, which houses the archaeology museum, winding streets lead down to the quay, in much the same spot as its medieval predecessor. Beside it, on a small rise, stands the parish church of São Salvador, from the first half of the 14th century. The Pego Fundo river beach is about 500 metres from the centre, and 1 km from town, above the river, are the ruins of Castelo Velho, an Islamic fort founded in the 8th or 9th century. The river still links the two banks. A boat crosses to Sanlúcar, and the zipline over the Guadiana starts on the Spanish side and lands in Alcoutim: 720 metres in under a minute.
Alcoutim
Álamo Roman Dam
At the edge of the hamlet of Álamo, about 11 km south of Alcoutim, stands a Roman dam. It sits in the Fornalha gully, a tributary of the Guadiana. It is a straight wall about 40 metres long, more than 8 metres high and 2.8 metres thick, built of mortared greywacke blocks laid in horizontal courses. Seven buttresses are visible on the south side. It is thought to have held around 2,100 cubic metres of water in a reservoir some 90 metres long. The archaeologist Estácio da Veiga identified and recorded it in the late 19th century, and it probably supplied the Roman villa of Álamo nearby. It has been a listed monument since 1992.
Alcoutim
Guerreiros do Rio
Guerreiros do Rio is a riverside village on the Guadiana, about 8 km south of Alcoutim. Life here has always faced the river: for part of the 20th century it was a hub for smuggling with Spain, mostly dried fruit and other foodstuffs, wine and textiles. The village is home to the Museu do Rio, a branch of Alcoutim's municipal museum. It began in 1994 with an exhibition in the old village primary school, was extended from 2003 and reopened in September 2006 with the exhibition 'Olhar o Guadiana por dentro'. It tells the river's story: navigation and ore transport, traditional fishing, smuggling and the villages along the banks. Since 2008 it has also shown 'Barcos Tradicionais do Baixo Guadiana', scale models of the boats that worked the river until the mid-1960s, built by José Murta Pereira, who was born in the village. The GR15 Rota do Guadiana trail passes through on its stretch between Álamo and Alcoutim.
Alcoutim
Pereiro
Pereiro is a village in the north-eastern Algarve, inland within the municipality of Alcoutim, and now shares a parish with the town itself. Its parish church of São Marcos is documented from the first half of the 16th century. Inside is one of the most interesting sets of altarpieces in this corner of the Algarve, above all the altarpiece of souls, the only Mannerist example to survive in the area. The village also has the Casa do Ferreiro, a branch of Alcoutim's municipal museum that opened in 2011 in the old blacksmith's workshop, shut for more than forty years before that. It shows farm tools, household ironwork and the rings made from horseshoe nails that young men gave their sweethearts, along with a documentary of local memories. Pereiro is the start of the PR4 Caminhos da Fonte, a walk of about 10 km past the Pereiro reservoir, holm oak groves and the hamlet of Fonte Zambujo.
Alcoutim