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Updated: June 9, 2025
The town stands at the end of a long low hill and looks south over an endless plain across to Beja, one of the most extensive and, in its way, beautiful views in the country. At one end of the town on the slope of the hill stands the castle, and not far off in one of the streets is the town hall whose tower is too characteristic of the Alemtejo not to be noticed.
Outside it is only remarkable for its west door, an interesting example of an attempt to use the details of the early French renaissance, without understanding how to do so as in the pediment all the entablature except the architrave has been left out and for the short twisted pinnacles which somehow give to it, as to many other buildings in the Alemtejo, so Oriental a look, and which are seen again at Belem.
In the north-westernmost chapel stands the font, an elaborate work of the early renaissance; an octagonal bowl with twisted sides resting on a short twisted base. Not unlike the vaulting at Villar is that of the Matriz or mother church of Alvito, a small town in the Alemtejo, nor can it be very much later in date.
Well, then, Heaven nerve me for the task! I shall have an unpleasant story to narrate. You, who have been in Portugal, need not be reminded that the kingdom consists of six provinces Minho, Tras-os-Montes, Beira, Estremadura, Alemtejo and Algarve. In the early part of this summer a drought affected the whole kingdom.
Badajoz lies about a hundred miles distant from Lisbon, and is the principal frontier town of Spain in the direction of the Alemtejo. To reach this place, it was necessary to retravel the road as far as Monte More, which I had already passed in my excursion to Evora; I had therefore very little pleasure to anticipate from novelty of scenery.
Indeed the only natural frontiers are formed by the last thirty miles of the Minho in the north, by about eighty miles of the Douro, which in its deep and narrow gorge really separates Traz os Montes from Leon; by a few miles of the Tagus, and by the Guadiana both before and after it runs through a part of Alemtejo.
The rain, which, had it fallen in Alemtejo, the principal wheat-province of the kingdom, would have done incalculable good, benefited neither the vineyards of Minho nor the maize-crop anywhere. The consequence is, that this last-named crop, the principal bread-food of the country, has failed, and famine prevails throughout the land.
Wellington urged upon the regency of Portugal the devastation of the country districts, and especially that of Alemtejo, the natural resource of the French army; the Portuguese authorities resisted. "Deliver Portugal, instead of famishing it," said they.
Had I waited for them I should have probably landed at Aldea Gallega about midnight, and I felt little inclination to make my entree in the Alemtejo at that hour; therefore, as I saw small boats which can push off at any time lying near in abundance, I determined upon hiring one of them for the passage, though the expense would be thus considerably increased.
Here, even if not in Stonehenge, he will pause to marvel at the patient energy of the men of old who put together such colossal masses of stone. In Alemtejo, south of Cape de Sines, are several of these, usually about 6 feet in length, with a slight portico at one end.
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