Sagres, lying 5km/3mi from Cabo de Sao Vicente and the most southwesterly point of Portugal and indeed of Europe, is for the Portuguese and indeed for others too a magical place. It is here that Henry the Navigator is said to have founded his school of seamanship, where in the 15th C. the country's major
geographers, cartographers and astronomers are supposed to have assembled. However, current thinking suggests this was simply a temporary meeting of these various experts, without any real purpose in mind. However, that does not alter the fact that the whole region around Sagres still benefits from its legendary historical importance, be it real or not.
Both Sagres and Cabo de Sao Vicente lie on a rocky plateau which terminates abruptly at the coast to form steep cliffs of up to 150m/500ft in height. The countryside around Sagres is as raw as the climate, and the plateau is bare apart from a few clumps of semishrubs and the like.
Tourism has not yet taken a hold, and although there are a few hotels and private guest houses in and around Sagres the tourist infrastructure is not comparable with that in the holiday resorts further east in the Algarve.
Townscape
The modest little houses of the port and fishing harbor lie widely dispersed over the rocky and windswept plateau. Sagres possesses no town center as such; the main street ends at the busy harbor.
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