Top 6 Natural Monuments around São Cristóvão

The Pego do Altar Dam is located a few kilometres from Alcácer do Sal and was built in 1949 to supply the agricultural area of the Sado River valley and to produce electricity. Today it is very popular with foreigners in their motorhomes and with sports fishing enthusiasts. It is a magical place due to its landscapes, its capacity for leisure activities and its importance in irrigating the fields, where the main irrigated crop is rice. Not far from the Pego do Altar Dam, the village of Santa Susana has a curious feature: some buildings with modernist architecture from the 1940s, which are due to a benefactor of the region, Henrique Louro Fernandes, whose monogram (HF) can be found on some of them. A small church, with two 16th-century panels inside, somewhat deteriorated but magnificent, completes the interesting visit to this place. Recently, the drought that hit this area “uncovered” an old 200-year-old bridge that was submerged by the waters of the dam.

excellent route with beautiful landscapes

The Montado is a cultural landscape shaped by human activity. Over the ages mankind has been able to mould and sustain a multifunctional agro-silvo-pastoral ecosystem located in the south of the Tagus Valley. These areas were originally occupied by Mediterranean woodlands and are now populated by cork oaks and holm oaks - legally protected species since the 7th century - which grow in extreme edaphic-climatic conditions and very poor soils. Located in southern Europe, with a rich and wide variety of cultural influences, where the frontier between the Christian and Arab worlds was disputed during almost five centuries (up until the 13th century), the Montado has been influenced by a significant presence of military orders and a long period of feudal rule. Currently it still preserves remnants from previous epochs, in an economy that is sustained by the worldwide expansion of industrial cork production. The enormous biodiversity of the Montado system turns this area into a buffer zone against the advance of the ongoing global process of desertification. (1) This has been possible through a sustainable management of the balance between its arboreal, shrubby and herbaceous elements, based on the traditional knowledge and in the preservation of traditional forms of settlement.

The montado is one of the most emblematic landscapes in Portugal, especially in the Alentejo. It is a unique ecosystem, created by man, characteristic of the Alentejo. These are forests of holm oaks, cork oaks, oaks and chestnut trees, with a very delicate balance and which only exist in the Mediterranean, Algeria, Morocco and especially in the south of the Iberian Peninsula. This multifunctional system has trees as its structural component, with two species of oak standing out: the cork oak and the holm oak. It is around them that this semi-natural ecosystem with high levels of diversity develops. Livestock production in the Alentejo montado is very important, both at the farm level and on a regional scale. It is based on the silvo-pastoral system, with direct use of natural food resources by native breeds. The Alentejo Black Pig has a diet that consists of an extensive grazing regime in fields, in montados of holm oaks and cork oaks. The fruits of the trees are the main food resource of the montados. In the montados with holm oak, the holm oak dominates, producing acorns, in the montados with cork oak, producing slurry, and in the mixed montados, both species exist. Acorns and slurry are the fundamental energy source for finishing the Alentejo pig.

The Montado is an agrosilvopastoral system explored at several levels – trees, bushes and herbs – according to the potential of each region. On the tree level it can be made up of oaks like cork oak (Quercus suber), holm oak (Q. rotundifolia) and less frequently pyrene oak (Q. pyrenaica) and portuguese oak (Q. faginea), in pure or mixed populations with variable densities. The ground cover is occupied by pastures used by cattle or is used for dry land crops on a rotation system. The natural pastures can be occupied by shrubs, in variable proportions. Humans are an integral and fundamental part of this ecosystem. It was through our clearing action that the montados were created, ever since we started intervening on our natural surroundings. Human management is necessary, in a more or less intensive way, in order to maintain the montado. Without this intervention, the system evolves, naturally to form a dense forest, where people have more difficulty obtaining resources. The way this process of transformation of the Mediterranean forest developed influenced the structure of the system as it presents today. Some older practices still persist, now without context, making more difficult the adaptation of the system to the new ways of agrarian production. Other ways emerged, some well adapted to the system, other causing more or less serious disturbances. The montado is a system for using the soil developed on a physical background that involves climate, pedological and geomorphological factors with specific characteristics. It is why this ecosystem is restricted to such a limited area, when compared to other ecosystems in our planet.

Typical Alentejo farm. Private property. Not open to visitors...

Fonte Ferrenha is a spring of iron water that cannot be drunk immediately, due to the enormous amount of iron that gives it a rusty hue. To be able to drink this water, the liquid must be left to stand for at least two days...

The chapel is built on a dolmen. Great!