High above the eastern frontier of the Portuguese Alentejo, where the land falls away toward the sinuous Guadiana River and Spain stretches away to the east, the medieval village of Monsaraz crowns its hilltop in a perfect oval of white-washed walls and slate-roofed houses. At its highest point, set within the south-eastern corner of the fortifications, rises Monsaraz Castle, a sober and elegant fourteenth-century stronghold built to defend the new-born Portuguese kingdom against its powerful Castilian neighbour.
The view from its battlements today, sweeping across the vast blue expanse of the Alqueva Reservoir and over olive groves, vineyards, and golden plains, is among the most breathtaking in Portugal, and the village it crowns has rightly been called the Eagle's Nest of the Alentejo.
