According to a statement released by the Lagos Town hall, the elevation of Lagos to city status is considered one of the most significant moments in local history because it was a clear recognition of the importance that the port town garnered.

This action led to the headquarters for the governors of the Kingdom of the Algarve to get set up in the city, as a result making it one of the most important locations in the history of the country. The upgrade to city status is also considered to have been crucial in Lagos being the place where the first ships sailed on the voyages of discovery, which in turn opened Europe up to the rest of the world and everything that those brought with them.

Starting with the 24^th of January the Lagos Town Hall is organizing a variety of cultural activities, which aim to promote the local cultural heritage as well as attract some tourists in the winter low-season.

On the 24^th of January the tourist guides and other professionals from the tourism sector will take part in a day-long seminar meant to refresh their knowledge in relation to Lagos’ cultural and archaeological heritage so that they can then better pass on this information onto their visitors.

The activity will be held in Portuguese and is free for tourism professionals  for those who registered to attend until the 21^st of January.

Also on the 24^th a book entitled “Legado do Conde de Ferreira no Algarve” – The Legacy of Count Ferreira in the Algarve – will be launched at the Cultural Centre at 4:30PM.

On the 25^th of January, guide Jose Antonio Martins will be carrying out a free guided tour of the historic centre of Lagos, an activity open to the general public which will take place between 10AM and 1PM.

The town features a couple of interesting monuments, including the home and a monument dedicated to the man who changed much of the face of Portugal – Duarte Pacheco. His monument at the top of the Avenida 25 de Abril reflects Pacheco’s commitment to modernize the architecture of Salazar’s Portugal. The place also features a castle – as most of the Algarve destinations feature one sort of fortification or another – however Loule also has a salt mine that you can visit which has some huge galleries from 230 to 270 metres long that will sometimes house art exhibitions.

Heading westwards you can go to Silves and its extraordinarily magnificent Moorish castle, a city that prospered greatly while it was the capital of the Moorish Al-garb.

Silves was something of a cultural centre during that hay-day, a centre for poets, chroniclers and lawmakers. The city was re-conquered by D. Sancho, however it wasn’t reclaimed by Christians till 1242.

Over in Portimao, the Municipal Museum makes good use of an old canning factory which is located near the museum-home of a former President of the country who was a businessman, painter, author and diplomat. He agreed to run for the Presidency only under pressure from his friends who then promptly betrayed him.

Just like Tavira, Lagos knew how to maximize its position and the many ships that set off from Lagos on the voyages of discovery returned with ivory, gold, silver and slaves. As a result of this influx of trade materials, rich merchants moved here and a lot of money went into building their houses and into building churches – unfortunately much of this wealth of architecture was lost in the aftermath of the earthquake and subsequent tsunamis of 1755.

This pretty much concludes our Algarve guide from a history point of view, obviously there could be many more things that we could talk about, but we kept it to the general dates and mentions, we’ll talk about the other in the future, till then however, keep our Algarve car rental services in mind while on your trip there, you won’t regret it.