Sagres Point

Sagres Point (Ponta de Sagres, Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈsaɣɾɨʃ], from the Latin Promontorium Sacrum ‘Holy Promontory’) is a windswept shelf-like promontory located in the southwest Algarve region of southern Portugal. Only 4 km to the west and 3 km to the north lies Cape St. Vincent (Cabo de São Vicente), which is usually taken as the southwesternmost tip of Europe. The vicinity of Sagres Point and Cape St. Vincent has been used for religious purposes since Neolithic times, to which standing menhirs near Vila do Bispo, a few miles from both points, attest.

The promontory of Sagres has always been important for sailors because it offers a shelter for ships before attempting the dangerous voyage around Cape St. Vincent (could be Belixe Bay, between Sagres Point and the Cape, or Sagres Bay, to the east). Given the dangers of being blown onto the coastal rocks, captains preferred to wait in the lee of the point until favourable winds allowed them to continue.

There is some question whether Sagres Point, whose name derives from Sacrum Promontorium, or neighboring Cape St. Vincent, was the ancient sacred promontory. Strabo believed the promontory was the most westerly point of the "whole inhabited world." In fact Cape St. Vincent is more westerly, but because it is further north, and Strabo's map of the Iberian Peninsula is rotated clockwise, bringing the Pyrenees into a north-south line, it could have been taken as further east. The most westerly point of the Iberian peninsula and of the European continent is Cabo da Roca, near Sintra; the southernmost, Punta de Tarifa, in Andalusia.

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