Fontainhas
Fontainhas (Santo Antão)
Interesting facts
- In 2015 the Spanish edition of National Geographic ranked Fontainhas second among ten places in the world with the best view.
- In 2024 the government of Cape Verde classified the village as National Cultural and Natural Heritage, citing its landscape and its testimony to local traditions.
- The 2010 census counted 282 inhabitants in Fontainhas, spread across hamlets such as Aranhas, Corvo, Formiguinhas, Lombo and Selada.
- Much of Santo Antão's stone terracing and its cobbled mountain roads is attributed to enslaved labour in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
- The village belongs to the parish of Nossa Senhora do Livramento, and its residents are known as Fontainhenses.
Why it is worth it
Fontainhas, on the island of Santo Antão in Cape Verde, is a ribbon of brightly painted houses strung along the crest of a narrow ridge, with sheer drops into a deep ravine on either side. The colours of the walls stand out against dark volcanic rock and the green of the cultivated slopes, and from below the village looks almost suspended above the valley. National Geographic has listed it among the villages with the most beautiful views in the world.
The settlement lies near the rocky north coast of the island, in the municipality of Ribeira Grande, at about 158 metres above sea level. The slopes around it are cut into narrow agricultural terraces, built by hand so that crops could be grown on the fertile volcanic soil of ground far too steep to farm otherwise. Fontainhas also takes in the smaller hamlets of Corvo and Forminguinhas, about a kilometre to the west, where the ravine narrows into a canyon.
Santo Antão is the westernmost island of Cape Verde, its north coast scored by deep valleys running down from the central heights to the sea. Fontainhas is about 2 km southwest of the small town of Ponta do Sol, and the coastal footpath that starts there passes through the village and continues west along the cliffs towards Cruzinha da Garça, linking settlements set in seemingly impossible places above the Atlantic.
Getting there
Fontainhas lies about 2 km from Ponta do Sol and 19 km north of Porto Novo, the island's main port. The nearest city is Mindelo on the neighbouring island of São Vicente, about 35 km away across the channel, and the nearest airport is Cesária Évora International Airport (VXE) on São Vicente. Ferries cross from Mindelo to Porto Novo, from where a road crosses the island to Ribeira Grande and Ponta do Sol; a footpath leads up from Ponta do Sol to the village.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Fontainhas is a settlement in the northern part of the island of Santo Antão, Cape Verde. It is situated near the rocky north coast of the island, two km southwest of Ponta do Sol and 19 km north of the island capital Porto Novo. The settlement includes the smaller villages Corvo and Forminguinhas, about one km west of Fontainhas proper.
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