Beja

Ancient Roman town, it was a Muslim cultural centre later on. In the Queen Leonor Museum are valuable archeologic finds. Other legacies: churches of Santo António (Visigothic) and Santa Maria; convent and castle of São Francisco (currently a pousada); chapel of Santo André (Gothic-Moorish), and Misericórdia Church (Renaissance). Roman ruins at Pisões.

Mértola

This tower sits over the right bank of the Guardiana river. The town’s main attraction is its castle, built by the Moors, with a guard tower from the 13th-century. The main church, with its sculpted façade, contains elements from the Manueline period, occupies the site of what once was an ancient mosque. Mértola has three important museum sites as a consequence of the intense archeological activity there. The Roman museum occupies the Town Hall building. The Islamic collection includes the country’s most important archive of ceramic objects (9th to 13th-centuries). Here too is one of the rarest early Christian basilicas in the entire Iberian peninsula (dating from the 5th-century).