A seaside village seven kilometres west of Lagos, built between a Roman bath house and a black volcanic cliff.
Luz — properly Praia da Luz — takes its name from the church of Nossa Senhora da Luz, and the village grew up around it. Fishing sustained it until the 1970s, when the tuna changed their migratory route and the canning industry that had employed the village fell away. Tourism replaced it, along with a resident British community large enough to leave its mark on the bars and shops along the front.
Beneath all of that lies something far older. Set into the promenade, and open to visitors every day, are the remains of a Roman bath complex built in the second or third century and a line of fish-salting tanks running some 156 metres. Estácio da Veiga excavated them in 1878; they were covered over again early in the twentieth century and only reopened in 1987. A plan on site lets you pick out the frigidarium. Among the finds were fragments of a marble statue, a silver liturgical spoon and a gold coin from the end of the fourth century.
At the eastern end of the beach stands the Rocha Negra, a black volcanic dyke pushed up from the same system that formed the Serra de Monchique. It is a steep walk, and the best place in the village to watch the sun go down. At the other end, the seventeenth-century fortress that once guarded against pirate raids now houses a restaurant, its terrace open to the Atlantic.
The church itself carries an inscription dated 1521, was wrecked by the earthquake of 1755, and was fully restored in 1874.
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