Sagres - Fortaleza de Sagres

The Fortaleza de Sagres lies on the Ponta de Sagres, 2km/1.25mi south of Sagres. This narrow promontory reaching out into the sea was called Promontorium Sacrum (sacred promontory) by the Romans, who thought this remote area was a home of the gods. The fortress still forms a focal point in the story of Portuguese discovery and conquest in the 15th and 16th C., even though, as mentioned above, it seems improbable that an international center ever existed here. Henry the Navigator is said to have preferred his house in Lagos to that on the cliffs at Sagres and to have come here only very occasionally. Sagres harbor remained unimportant, as the expeditions that Henry financed and organized set out from Lagos.

Fortifications

Little remains of the original fort built in Henry the Navigator's time. This was largely destroyed in an attack by Sir Francis Drake and by the 1755 earthquake, but the fortifications were rebuilt in the 18th C.; hence the date of 1793 above the entrance to what are among the earliest defensive walls to be restored using concrete. Inside the walls there are very few remains from Henry's time.