Cape St Vincent

(Local Name: Cabo de Sao Vicente) At the western tip of the coast is the windswept Cabo de Sao Vicente, a rocky headland rising 60m/200ft above the sea, familiar in British history as the scene of the naval victory of Cape St Vincent over a Spanish fleet in 1797. On the cape is a lighthouse 24m/80ft high, with a light which is visible at a distance of 35km/22mi.

The fortifications all around date back to the early 16th C., when the Bishop of Silves built the first lighthouse here together with defensive walls and a monastery. Most of these buildings were destroyed in 1587 during an attack by Sir Francis Drake's fleet. The buildings we see today were commissioned by Queen Maria II in 1846. Here in the 12th C. a ship bearing the body of St Vincent (martyred in 304) came ashore, accompanied by two ravens. The mortal remains of the patron saint of seafarers and vinegrowers were subsequently interred in Lisbon in a silver shrine in Sé Patriarcal.