MÉRTOLA
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1,200.
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Rua da Igreja 1
(Tel: 286 610 109 ). -
1st Thu of
month.
Pretty, whitewashed Mértola is of great historical interest. The whole of this
small town is a vila museu , a museum site, with discoveries
from different eras exhibited in núcleos , or areas where a
concentration of treasures from that period can be found. The tourist office has
details of each núcleo .
Mértola’s origins date back to the Phoenicians, who created a thriving inland
port here on the Guadiana, later enjoyed by the Romans and the Moors. Roman
artefacts can be seen at the Núcleo Romano , based at an
excavation beneath the municipal council buildings.
The post-Roman period in Mértola is on display in the Núcleo
Visigótico and in an early Christian basilica whose
ruins adjoin the Roman road to Beja. The influence bequeathed by several
centuries of Moorish domination is seen in Mértola’s Núcleo
Islâmico which houses one of the country’s best collections of
Portuguese Islamic art, and includes ceramics, coins and jewellery. The Igreja Matriz below the Moorish walls was formerly a mosque,
unique in Portugal for being so little altered. Among surviving Arab features
are the five-nave layout, four horseshoe arches and a mihrab
or prayer niche.
Overlooking the town is the crumbling hilltop castle , with its
keep of 1292, offering lovely views of the river valley.
The copper mines at Minas de São Domingos , 16 km (10 miles)
to the east, were the main employer in the area from 1858 to 1965, when the
vein was exhausted. An English company ran the mine under the harshest
conditions, with miners’ families living in one windowless room. The
village’s population has now fallen from 6,000 to 800, and the ghost-town
atmosphere is relieved only by a reservoir and surrounding lush
greenery.
Around Mértola, 600 sq km (230 sq miles) of the wild Guadiana valley is a
newly designated Parque Natural , home to the black stork,
azure-winged magpie and raptors such as the red kite.
Mértola’s unusual Moorish-style church, high above the River Guadiana
Groves of evergreen cork oak (Quercus suber) provide the
Alentejo with welcome shade and a thriving industry. It was Dom Pérignon,
the wine-making monk, who in the 17th century revived the use of cork as a
tasteless, odourless seal for wine. Portugal, the world’s largest cork
producer, has almost 7,000 sq km (2,700 sq miles) under cultivation and
turns out some 30 million corks a day. In rural areas, this versatile bark
is fashioned into waterproof, heatproof food containers and these decorated
boxes are a traditional craft of the Alentejo.
Harvesting cork is a skilled task. Mature trees, stripped in summer every ten
years or so, reveal a raw red undercoat until their new bark grows.
