Faro: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Most visitors to the Algarve land at Faro and leave it at once, and miss a small walled old town that has stood on the edge of a lagoon since the Romans. Its history includes the first book ever printed in Portugal — in Hebrew — and a bishop’s library carried off by an English earl. Ninety minutes, flat; storks nest on every tower.
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A short history of Faro
In the Roman period the town was called Ossonoba. After several centuries of Muslim rule, King Afonso III captured it in 1249, completing the conquest of Portugal from the Muslims. In 1487 Samuel Gacon printed a Hebrew Pentateuch here, the first book printed in Portugal. In 1596 English forces sacked and burned the town. After the earthquake of 1755 Faro replaced Lagos as the capital of the Algarve. Today its airport is the gateway to all the beaches of the Algarve.
The ten best sights in Faro
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1Arco da Vila
The neoclassical gate into the walled old town, with a stork nest on top
2Sé de FaroClimb the tower for the lagoon and the islands
3Museu MunicipalA Roman mosaic of Oceanus in a convent cloister
4Igreja do CarmoBehind it a chapel lined with the bones of over a thousand monks
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5Jewish Cemetery
On this road, the graves of the nineteenth-century community and a small museum
6Praia de FaroThe town beach on a sand spit, across a bridge
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7Ilha Deserta
An uninhabited sand island in the lagoon; one restaurant and a boardwalk
8CulatraA fishermen’s island village with no cars
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9Farol
The lighthouse village on the barrier island, ocean on one side
10LudoSalt pans and marsh trails of the Ria Formosa; flamingos
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What is an audio walk?
Tours in Faro →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Faro:
Free walking tours in Faro
The town inside the walls
Most visitors to the Algarve land at Faro and leave it at once, and miss a small walled old town that has stood on the edge of a lagoon since the Romans. Its history includes the first book ever printed in Portugal — in Hebrew — and a bishop’s library carried off by an English earl. Ninety minutes, flat; storks nest on every tower.
- Arco da Vila · The gate into the Vila Adentro, the town inside the walls, was rebuilt in neoclassical style after the earthquake of 1755, in front of the older Moorish arch that still stands behind it. White storks have nested on its top for generations, and their clattering is the sound of the old town.
- Sé de Faro · In 1596 the Earl of Essex sacked Faro on his way home from attacking Cádiz, and took the bishop’s library with him to England, where he gave it to the new Bodleian Library in Oxford; some of the books are still there. From the cathedral tower the whole lagoon and its islands lie flat to the horizon.
- Museu Municipal · A sixteenth-century convent of Poor Clares around a two-storey cloister, and inside the museum a large Roman mosaic of the god Oceanus with his crab-claw horns, found in the town in 1926 — Faro was the Roman port of Ossonoba.
- Rua de Santo António · The pedestrian street of the newer town, paved in the black-and-white stone mosaic the Portuguese call calçada, laid by hand stone by stone. It leads from the harbour to the lanes where the town eats and drinks.
- Igreja do Carmo · A gilded baroque church with, in its garden behind, a chapel built in 1816 whose walls are lined with the skulls and bones of over a thousand Carmelite friars, dug up from the cemetery. The inscription over the door asks visitors to stop and consider that they will end the same way.
- Jewish Cemetery · In 1487, in Faro, a Jewish printer named Samuel Gacon produced a Hebrew Pentateuch — the first book ever printed in Portugal. Ten years later the Jews were expelled or forced to convert. In the nineteenth century Jews from Gibraltar and Morocco settled here again, and their walled cemetery, used from the 1830s to the 1930s, survives with a small museum.
The lagoon and its islands
In front of Faro lies the Ria Formosa, sixty kilometres of lagoon, salt marsh and sand islands, a natural park and one of the great bird wetlands of Europe. The islands have no cars: a fishermen’s village, a lighthouse hamlet, an empty island with one restaurant. A full day by ferry and on foot; take the first boat out.
- Doca de Faro · The ferries and water taxis to the islands leave from the quays by the old town. The lagoon is tidal, and the channels the boats take change with the tide; at low water the sand banks are covered with people digging for clams.
- Ilha Deserta · The southernmost point of mainland Portugal is a sand island with no inhabitants, a single restaurant and a boardwalk of a few kilometres through the dunes. Its official name is Barreta; everyone calls it the deserted island.
- Farol · A hamlet of summer houses around a lighthouse on the barrier island, with the calm lagoon on one side and the open Atlantic on the other, two minutes’ walk apart. The lighthouse was built in 1851 and is one of the tallest in Portugal.
- Culatra · A real fishing village on the island, of about a thousand people, with no cars and streets of sand. The families fish and farm clams and oysters in the lagoon, and the restaurants by the jetty serve them.
- Olhão Markets · Olhão is the fishing port of the lagoon, a town of flat cubic roofs that its sailors are said to have copied from North Africa. Its two red-brick market halls of 1916 stand on the waterfront, one for fish and one for fruit and vegetables, and on Saturday morning the whole region comes.
- Ludo · On the western side of the lagoon, trails run through salt pans and marsh where flamingos, spoonbills and herons feed. The Ria Formosa is also home to one of the largest populations of seahorses in the world, though it has fallen sharply.
Tavira and the eastern Algarve
East of Faro the Algarve is quieter: white towns of churches and tiled façades, tuna-fishing villages, salt marshes, and at the end the river that is the border with Spain. Inland, a Roman villa and a pink palace. A full day and a car.
- Milreu · The ruins of a large Roman country villa, with the bath rooms still floored in mosaics of fish and sea creatures, and the tall walls of a temple to the water spirits that was later turned into a church.
- Palácio de Estoi · A nineteenth-century palace in pink with terraced gardens of statues, fountains and tiles, built by a wealthy family next to the Roman ruins and now a hotel. The gardens can be walked.
- Tavira Roman Bridge · The bridge called Roman is medieval on Roman foundations, and it crosses the river into Tavira, a town of more than thirty churches and of houses with four-sided pyramid roofs. Tavira grew rich on tuna, which was caught in great nets off its coast until the shoals vanished in the 1970s.
- Praia do Barril · A little train crosses the marsh to this beach, where the old tuna-fishing village has become cafés. On the sand above the beach lie rows of rusting anchors from the tuna nets, left when the fishery ended — the cemetery of anchors.
- Cacela Velha · A hamlet of a few white houses, a church and a little fort on a bluff over the eastern end of the lagoon. At low tide you can walk across the channel to the barrier beach below, and the oysters of the lagoon are served in the one or two restaurants.
- Vila Real de Santo António · After the earthquake of 1755 the Marquis of Pombal rebuilt Lisbon on a grid, and here he tried the same idea from scratch: a whole town built in about five months in 1774, on a grid around a square, facing Spain across the Guadiana. A ferry crosses to Ayamonte in a few minutes.
Getting to Faro and getting around
- Faro Airport · Fifteen minutes from the old town by bus; the gateway to the whole Algarve
- Faro Station · Trains to Lisbon and along the coast, by the harbour
- Doca de Faro · The little harbour; ferries to the lagoon islands leave nearby
Cheap eats in Faro
The food of the eastern Algarve comes out of the lagoon and the sea: clams cooked with garlic and coriander, oysters farmed in the Ria Formosa, grilled octopus in Santa Luzia, tuna in Tavira, and cataplana, the shellfish stew in a hinged copper pan. In the hills inland it turns to almonds, carob and figs, made into small sweets. The markets of Olhão and Loulé are the places to eat standing up.
- Olhão Markets · Clams and fish at the market cafés, Saturday morning
- Santa Luzia · Octopus caught in clay pots
- Loulé Market · Almond and fig sweets and honey from the hills
- Culatra · Lagoon oysters by the island jetty
- Rua de Santo António · Coffee and pastries in the old town
- Tavira Roman Bridge · Tuna steaks in the town of the tuna fishery
Museums in Faro
Faro’s past is layered: the Roman port of Ossonoba, the Moorish town, the first printing press in Portugal, and a Jewish community that came back three centuries after the expulsion. The museums are small and quiet.
- Museu Municipal · The Oceanus mosaic in a convent cloister
- Jewish Cemetery · The first book printed in Portugal was Hebrew
- Milreu · Roman villa mosaics of fish
- Sé de Faro · The cathedral raided by the Earl of Essex
- Castro Marim Castle · The first seat of the Order of Christ, facing Spain
Nature and day trips near Faro
The Ria Formosa is a lagoon sixty kilometres long behind a chain of sand islands, and at every tide a large part of its water is exchanged with the ocean. Flamingos, spoonbills and storks feed in its salt pans, and its sea grass holds seahorses.
- Ludo · Salt-pan trails with flamingos
- Ilha Deserta · A boardwalk over an empty island
- Castro Marim Castle · The salt-marsh reserve below the castle
- Lagoa dos Salgados · Birds in a lagoon behind the dunes
- Querença · Walks in the barrocal hills among carob and almond
- Cacela Velha · Walk across the lagoon at low tide
Things to do in Faro with kids
The lagoon is a gentle place for children: ferries to car-free islands, shallow warm water on the lagoon side, a little train to the beach, and storks nesting on every tower in town.
- Praia do Barril · The little train to the beach and the anchors
- Ilha da Armona · A short ferry to calm lagoon water
- Arco da Vila · Storks nesting over the gate
- Praia de Faro · The town beach, lagoon on one side
- Tavira Castle · Climb the walls over the rooftops
- Fuseta · A shallow lagoon beach in a fishing village
Holy places in Faro
The churches of the eastern Algarve are lined with gold and with azulejos, the blue-and-white tiles that tell Bible stories on whole walls. Next to them stand the memory of the Jewish community and a chapel made of bones.
- São Lourenço de Almancil · The life of Saint Lawrence in tiles, wall to dome
- Igreja do Carmo · The chapel of bones
- Sé de Faro · The cathedral and its tower
- Jewish Cemetery · The graves of the returned community
- Tavira Castle · The churches of Tavira below the walls
Nightlife in Faro
Faro is a university town, and in term time its old-town lanes fill with students at night. The big resort nights of the Algarve are west in Albufeira; the east is quieter, evenings over fish by the water.
- Rua de Santo António · Student bars in the lanes around it
- Doca de Faro · Sunset over the lagoon from the harbour
- Albufeira · The resort strip of the Algarve
- Olhão Markets · Evening fish restaurants on the waterfront
- Sé de Faro · Summer concerts in the cathedral square
Frequently asked questions about Faro
What is there to see in Faro?
The top sights in Faro are Arco da Vila, Sé de Faro and Museu Municipal. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Faro?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Faro without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Faro?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Faro, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The town inside the walls.
How do you get to Faro and get around?
The main ways are Faro Airport, Faro Station and Doca de Faro. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Faro, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Faro that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Faro for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.