the red sandstone that dominates the algarve
There's a specific stone you notice as soon as you enter Silves: the reddish sandstone, cut right here, that lines the castle walls and gives them the colour you don't forget. It's not paint, not a recent restoration. It's the original material, called grés de Silves, that the Islamic builders used to face the rammed earth they raised at the highest point of the hill.
The Castelo de Silves occupies around 12,000 square metres and forms an irregular polygon with eleven towers connected by a 388-metre wall walk. The main entrance is through a double gate with an atrium, flanked by two of those towers. On the north side of the wall there's also the so-called Porta da Traição, a discreet postern that allowed leaving the alcazaba without passing through the medina. The name explains the function.
Inside you find the aljibe, the cistern that supplied a large part of the city: twenty metres long, sixteen wide, a ceiling seven metres up closed by four barrel vaults side by side, supported by six central columns. The scale belongs to another era, when water inside walls was the difference between holding out and surrendering. The visit itself is mostly outdoors, with views over the rooftops of Silves and the Arade plain that opens to the south.
xelb, the capital the crusaders saw
In the 10th century, the Arab historian Arrazi was already describing Silves as the finest town in the Algarve. The Islamic city of that time had its own name: Xelb. In the following centuries it became the capital of a taifa, under Al-Mutamid, and the castle served both as a residence and as a control post over the rio Arade, which was navigable and linked the interior to the Atlantic.
In 1189, D. Sancho I took Silves with the help of crusaders in transit to the Holy Land. The conquest didn't last: the Moors retook the city shortly after. The siege was described by Islamic chroniclers and by Alexandre Herculano, who left a portrait of the city as seen by the crusaders, crowned by the alcazaba at the top of the hill. The definitive reconquest only came with D. Afonso III, in the mid-13th century. Near the main entrance is the bronze statue of D. Sancho I, the only Portuguese king to conquer (and lose) this castle.
In 1456, Infante D. Henrique became the castle's commander. There are traces of a sugar mill from the 14th or 15th century in the vicinity, possibly connected to the Infante, who promoted the cultivation of sugar cane in the region and the Atlantic islands. The castle was classified as a national monument in 1910 and restored in the 1940s. What you see today is the result of those interventions on what the earthquakes of 1504 and 1587 still left standing.
go ready for
- red sandstone walls that change colour throughout the day
- the Arab cistern, one of the largest covered medieval spaces you can enter in the Algarve
- the Porta da Traição in the north wall, almost always ignored by tour groups
- views over the historic centre of Silves and the Arade plain
