Alentejo

The Alentejo covers roughly a third of Portugal — everything south of the Tagus and north of the Algarve — and contains some of the most beautiful, least visited, and most rewarding landscape in southern Europe. It is a region of cork oak forests (Portugal produces half the world’s cork), olive groves, white-washed villages perched on hills, and a coastline that has been protected from the development that consumed the Algarve.

The interior centres on towns like Monsaraz — a medieval walled village on a ridge overlooking the Alqueva reservoir, the largest artificial lake in Europe. The castle walls, the cobblestoned streets, the view at sunset: all extraordinary, all nearly empty. Évora, the regional capital, is a UNESCO city with a Roman temple, a Gothic cathedral, and the Capela dos Ossos — a chapel lined with the bones of 5,000 monks, which is either macabre or beautiful depending on your disposition.

The coast — the Vicentina Natural Park — is the Alentejo’s greatest treasure. Wild, wind-sculpted cliffs dropping to vast empty beaches. Praia do Malhão, Praia da Samoqueira, Praia dos Alteirinhos — each reached by dirt roads and short walks through scrubland. No sunbed concessions. No beach bars. Just sand, Atlantic wind, and the particular shade of blue that the Portuguese coast turns in the afternoon light.

The wine is having its moment. Alentejo reds are full-bodied and earthy, built for the local cuisine of slow-braised pork and bread-based dishes. Herdade do Esporão near Reguengos is the estate to visit — vast, beautiful, with a restaurant that takes the region’s peasant cooking seriously.

When to go: April to June or September to October. July and August are hot in the interior — genuinely, punishingly hot. The coast is cooler but the wind can be fierce.