Albufeira - Algarve - Portugal

    First and foremost, Albufeira is famed for its beaches, for the countless shades and tones of its rocks and cliffs. This is a place where people live to the rhythm of the great holiday destinations, sunbathing during the day and at sunset flocking to enjoy the restaurants, bars and discotheques that enliven the nighttime hours. Just a few miles inland and everything changes. The green of the countryside is dotted with almond, fig, orange and pine trees and decorated chimneys stand out against the ochre of tiled roofs. Bucolic villages invite you to experience a way of life rooted in the tranquillity of nature, to add another dimension to your holidays.

Progress has turned Albufeira into a city with tourism and leisure as its vocation. But stress in the old Cerro da Vila area still retain the picturesque appeal of withewashed houses and steeply climbing narrow stress. There is a Moorish arc on Travessa da Igreja Velha, where there stood first a mosque and later the town's first church.    On the beach, the bright colours of the fishing boats contrast with the blue of the sea. Oblivious to the holiday-makers sunbathing nearby, the fisher-men continue with the task of reading their nets, much as they have done for thousand of years.

Many of the traditional crafts of the Algarve are to be found in Albufeira. Local craftsmen and women continue to make palm and rushwork items, objects in copper and tin, baskets, lace and typical footwear, as they have done for centuries. More recent in origin, but equally creative, are the painted textiles and tapestries produced, which are often decorated with regional motifs.

   Archaeological sites confirm that there were men living in the Albufeira area in the Neolithic period and during the Bronze Age. The Romans settled in Albufeira, on the Cerro da Vila, a rock formation that constituted an impregnable quasi-peninsula overlooking the sea and the mouth of the Albufeira creek. Little is known of the Roman town of Baltum beyond the fact that it was a fishing centre and that there were mines operating in its vicinity. With the Arab conquest, the city was given the name of Al-Buhera, and it is from this that its current name derives. The Moorish occupation was a period of prosperity based on agriculture and on trade with North Africa, which led to the construction - or reconstruction - of the town's castle and defensive walls.

After the first Christian occupation in 1189/1190, Albufeira became part of the kingdom of the Algarve after the definitive reconquest in 1249. A period of decline ensued due to dwindling trade with the ports of the Mediterranean, and was followed by economic revival during the period of the Discoveries (15th/16th centuries). In the 18th century, a series of seismic tremors, culminating in the earthquake of 1755, reduced Albufeira to poverty, and it was only at the end of the 19th century that prosperity returned, with the growth of the fishing and fish preserves industry. Since the 1960s Albufeira has become an internationally renowned centre for tourism, which has brought renewed growth and, in 1986, elevation to the status of a city.