Portugal - Mértola

The town of Mértola owes a great part of its historical importance to the Guadiana River where, the first important text with information on commercial circulation, was the charter of Mértola, from 1254, granted by D. Paio Peres Correia, Master of the Santiago Order. A river port in constant contact with the sea, it has been, over many millennia, an important commercial port where metal extracted in Alentejo’s interior and cereal from the fertile lands of Beja have passed. Benefiting from the exceptional position of a rocky outcrop separating the Guadiana waters from the Oeiras riverbank, the old city of Mértola has been - since the Pre-Roman Age - an important trading hub where people arrived to stay and products from the most disparate places in the old Mediterranean world have been circulating. Its historical importance comes from these multiple factors combined, of which this currently small village only shows very little but still echo through the monumental heritage and archaeological remains that are proof of such a significant past for the construction and organisation of the European south-west territory. In the early Middle Ages, the Guadiana River went through a slowdown as a communication channel until it gained a determining role in most of Alentejo’s vitality, as well as the regional and national economy, during what was known as the ‘mineral cycle’ (1857-1917).