Azenhas do Mar

Azenhas do Mar spills down a cliff above the Atlantic on the coast of Sintra, its whitewashed houses with terracotta roofs stacked in terraces right to the edge of the rock. At the foot of the cliff lies a small beach and a tidal pool cut into the rocks in the middle of the twentieth century, filled by the waves at high tide. Seen from the road on the headland to the south, the village appears as a single cascade of white walls falling towards the surf.

The name means "watermills of the sea": mills once stood along the Cameijo creek that runs down to the shore here, grinding wheat. The early village lived from milling, fishing and vines. The sandy soils of the Colares area gave its wine a particular history, since the Ramisco vines rooted in sand were spared by the phylloxera epidemic that devastated most European vineyards; wine production at Azenhas is recorded from 1848, and the Adega Beira Mar was founded in 1900.

Azenhas do Mar is a relatively recent resort. It does not appear in an 1876 guide to Portuguese beaches, and its fame grew in the early twentieth century, helped by visits from King Carlos I. In 1920 the architect Raul Lino built a holiday house here, and in 1930 the Sintra tramway, which already ran to Praia das Maçãs, was extended to the village, turning it into a seaside destination; the tram reached Azenhas until 1955. The Chapel of Saint Lawrence goes back to the late sixteenth century. The village belongs to the parish of Colares in the municipality of Sintra, within the Sintra-Cascais Natural Park. Sintra itself, with its palaces scattered over a wooded range of hills, is a UNESCO World Heritage cultural landscape.

Getting there

Azenhas do Mar lies about 8.5 km from the centre of Sintra and roughly 30 km northwest of Lisbon. The nearest airfield is Cascais Airport (CAT), about 16 km away; Lisbon's Humberto Delgado Airport (LIS) handles scheduled international flights. The village is on the coastal road between Praia das Maçãs and Ericeira.