Alentejo travel: white villages, wine and megaliths

The region's historic capital, Evora fits inside its walls: a Roman temple, a fortified cathedral, a chapel lined with bones and a university founded in the 16th century. The centre is UNESCO-listed and walkable in a day. All around, the countryside holds the largest megalithic complex on the Iberian peninsula, including the Almendres cromlech, 15 km west, freely accessible. This is also the heart of the Alentejo wine route, over 250 producers, many open by appointment. Allow two full days for the town and its surroundings, and a car for the rest.

Three towns north-east of Evora have quarried marble since antiquity, which ended up shaping local architecture: thresholds, door frames and whole palaces in white stone. Estremoz has a medieval castle turned pousada and a large Saturday morning market. Vila Vicosa keeps the ducal palace of the Braganza family. The open-pit quarries, gaping beside the road, can be photographed from signed viewpoints. Borba, at the centre of the triangle, comes down to one long street and an 18th-century marble fountain, but its red wines, usually drunk young, are tasted at the local co-operative. Half a day is enough on the way to the Serra de Sao Mamede.

In the north, a cool granite massif contrasts with the plain. Marvao, a fortified eyrie at 860 metres, looks over the Spanish border and empties of visitors in the evening. Castelo de Vide, below, keeps one of the country's oldest medieval Jewish quarters and thermal springs. The nature park between the two offers hiking trails shaded by chestnut trees, walkable even in summer. Portalegre, the town, is worth it for its tapestry museum, where pieces are still woven from paintings by old masters, sometimes over more than a year of work. Allow a night on the spot to link the two villages and a three to four-hour walk in the nature park.

The south of the region, less visited, is also the driest. Beja, a former Roman town, serves as a stopover. Mertola, perched above the Guadiana, kept from Moorish rule a church that is a former mosque, complete with its mihrab. The river, wild for tens of kilometres, borders a nature park where eagles and vultures nest. It makes a one-night stop on the way to the coast, off the standard circuits. Serpa, further west, is worth it for its ramparts, its raw-milk sheep's cheese and its polyphonic singing, listed by UNESCO. Distances are long in the Baixo Alentejo: allow a good hour's drive between each town.

The Alentejo coast is Atlantic, windy and cold, but spectacular. In the north, the Troia peninsula and Comporta line up rice fields, pine woods and long white-sand beaches, an hour from Lisbon; the village has turned chic without being built up. Further south, the Costa Vicentina unrolls cliffs and coves followed by the Fishermen's Trail of the Rota Vicentina, in stages of 10 to 20 km. Vila Nova de Milfontes, at the mouth of the Mira, is the best base. The water rarely tops 19 °C; you come to walk and surf, less to swim, unlike the neighbouring Algarve.

The Alentejo makes a third of Portugal's wine, mostly full-bodied reds from aragonez and trincadeira, often fermented in clay amphorae by a Roman method called vinho de talha. The region also supplies half the world's cork: the oaks are stripped in summer, every nine years, and carry their cutting year painted on the trunk. The Alentejo black pig, raised free under the oaks on acorns, gives a ham comparable to Spanish pata negra. Many estates offer a tour, a tasting and a table.