The Algarve is southernmost region in Portugal. This region is also the most popular vacation destinations in Europe. It has amazing coastline and loveliest beaches. The main wonderful attractions are its beaches. Furthermore, the region is full of history with old bridges, amazing churches, castles and city walls.
Museu de Portimão
Museu de Portimão is housed in a 19th-century fish cannery. This is one excellent reason to visit Portimão. This museum focuses on three areas namely archaeology, underwater finds and, the most fascinating, a re-creation of the fish cannery. People can enjoy former production lines, complete with sound effects – clanking and grinding and the like.
Museu do Traje
The museum is a labour of love for the curator and Friends. It’s housed in a former cork magnate’s mansion. The building displays an ever-changing exhibition of local costumes. There are 15,000 in the museum store – it’s Portugal’s second-largest collection. The gallery holds regular music events, including fado (traditional song) performances, and every last Tuesday of the month a special tour takes visitors into the costume store.
Museu Municipal
This small but likeable museum has three rooms. Downstairs is an archaeological collection displaying everything from Stone Age axes to a 16th-century whipping post, while across the hall the Islamic section has a good selection of locally produced ceramics. Upstairs is an ethnographic display with everything from clocks to carts. Information is in Portuguese. An English video explains the area’s attractions, which include three nearby museums that you can enter on the same ticket.
Parque Natural da Ria Formosa
This sizeable system of lagoons and islands stretches for 60km along the Algarve coastline from west of Faro to Cacela Velha. It encloses a vast area of sapal (marsh), salinas (salt pans), creeks and dune islands. The marshes are an important area for migrating and nesting birds. You can see a huge variety of wading birds here, along with ducks, shorebirds, gulls and terns. This is the favoured nesting place of the little tern and the rare purple gallinule.
Sé de Faro
The sé was completed in 1251 but heavily damaged in the 1755 earthquake. What you see now is a variety of Renaissance, Gothic and baroque features. Climb the tower for lovely views across the walled town and estuary islands. The cathedral also houses the Museu Capitular, with an assortment of chalices, priestly vestments and grisly relics (including both forearms of St Boniface), and a small 18th-century shrine built of bones.
Torre da Tavira
The Torre da Tavira was formerly the town’s water tower. A simple but ingenious object, the camera obscura reveals a 360-degree panoramic view of Tavira, its monuments and local events, in real time – all while you are stationary.
