Old Lagos: from the bone chapel to the harbour fort: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
The old town of Lagos on foot, from a hilltop church to the harbour fort
Lagos was a harbour town, and the walk works its way down to the water past a king who left from here, a trade that arrived here and the defences built to protect the town.
The stops
A hermitage was built on this high ground in 1325, at a spot that once marked the northern edge of the town, and the church has been a National Monument since 1924. On its south side is the Chapel of Bones, with walls covered in bones laid out in geometric patterns and the skulls facing forward. It is rare in Portugal, and one of only three in the Algarve.
Photo: Acediscovery — CC BY 4.0 João Cutileiro's statue of King Sebastian was inaugurated in 1973 in Praça Gil Eanes. Sebastian raised Lagos to the rank of city in 1573, and in 1578 he left from here on the fatal military expedition to Morocco that ended at Alcácer Quibir.
Photo: Vitor Oliveira from Torres Vedras, PORTUGAL — CC BY-SA 2.0 A hermitage stood here from 1463, and the Carmelite nuns' convent built beside it was completed in 1554. The convent closed in 1833, and in 1970 the sculptor João Cutileiro set up his studio in it: the same Cutileiro who made the statue of King Sebastian you have just passed. The church reopened on 16 July 2023, the feast day of Our Lady of Carmel, after a restoration.
Photo: Ajpvalente — CC BY-SA 4.0 In 1444 six caravels sent out by Lagos merchants returned from the Bay of Arguin, in present-day Mauritania, with 235 enslaved Africans, and Henry the Navigator, as sponsor, was entitled to a fifth of their value. The building you see dates from 1691, later than those first sales: it was commissioned on the site of a 14th-century building used for slave sales, and from 1755 it served as the customs house. Since 2016 it has been a museum about slavery.
Photo: Matthias Süßen — CC BY-SA 4.0 Military men commissioned this church, and it was finished in 1707. The 1755 earthquake destroyed it, and it was rebuilt in 1769 on the orders of Hugo Beaty, an Irishman who commanded the Lagos Infantry Regiment. It is known for the gilded carving inside, and the Municipal Museum of Lagos is attached to the building.
Photo: Bextrel — CC BY-SA 4.0 This gate in the old town walls has a small oratory to Saint Gonçalo, the town's patron saint, set into its arch. Tradition says he was born in 1360 in a house near here, by the old sea gates, though the oratory itself only dates from the 1940s. Two towers flank the gate, and a church of Saint Barbara was placed above it in the reign of King João I.
Photo: Tibor Kovacs — CC BY 2.0 The Algarve coast suffered attacks by pirates and privateers after the Restoration War, and this fort was built at the mouth of the Bensafrim river as part of Lagos's defences. Work began around 1680 and finished in 1690, and a stone plaque credits the Count of Sarzedas with starting it and the Marquis of Nisa with completing it. You cross a small drawbridge to get in, and inside is a small chapel to Saint Barbara covered in tiles.
Photo: Matthias Süßen — CC BY-SA 4.0
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