The Algarve’s Underrated Capital: Faro’s Old Town, City Walls & Historic Jewish Quarter

Portugal’s Most Overlooked City Has Been Hiding in Plain Sight

Faro sits at the bottom of Portugal, a city that most visitors pass through without stopping — scanning the arrivals board at the airport, grabbing a rental car, and heading straight for the cliff-lined beaches of Lagos or Albufeira. That’s a significant mistake. The Algarve’s regional capital is a compact, layered city with Roman foundations, Moorish street plans, one of the best-preserved medieval town centers in southern Portugal, and a Jewish history that predates the expulsion of 1497. It also has a university, which means good coffee, lived-in bars, and none of the souvenir-shop monotony that flattens so many coastal towns. If you’re traveling through Portugal and want to understand how the south actually lives — not just how it looks on a postcard — Faro earns a proper stay.

Inside the Cidade Velha: Faro’s Medieval Heart

The Old Town, called Cidade Velha or Vila-Adentro, sits behind a set of Roman-era walls that were reinforced by the Moors and rebuilt again after the 1755 earthquake that leveled much of southern Portugal. You enter through the Arco da Vila, an elegant neoclassical arch built in the early 19th century on the site of an older Moorish gateway. A white stork almost certainly nests in the bell tower above it — storks have colonized these walls for generations, and spotting them is as much a part of the Faro experience as anything inside.

Once through the arch, the old town unfolds across a small hill in a tangle of cobblestone lanes, orange trees, and whitewashed buildings with wrought-iron balconies. It’s not large — you can walk the entire interior in twenty minutes — but the density of history packed into that space is remarkable. The Largo da Sé, the main square, is framed by the Cathedral (Sé de Faro), the Bishop’s Palace, and a collection of restored civic buildings. The square itself is planted with orange trees and flanked by Roman columns that were excavated during construction work and simply left where they stood.

The Sé de Faro is worth time. Started in the 13th century on the site of a mosque, which was itself built over a Visigoth church, it’s a layered architectural document — Gothic nave, Mannerist chapels, and a set of azulejo tile panels from the 18th century that rank among the finest in the Algarve. Climb the bell tower for a view across the old town rooftops, the Ria Formosa lagoon, and the low-lying islands beyond. Entry is inexpensive and the tower climb is rarely crowded even in summer.

The Museu Municipal de Faro, housed in a former convent adjacent to the cathedral square, holds a collection that punches well above its size. The Roman mosaic of Oceanus — a large, elaborate floor mosaic discovered during roadworks — is the centerpiece, but the museum also traces Faro’s Moorish period, the 1596 sack by the Earl of Essex (who stole the Bishop’s library and brought it back to England, where it became part of the Bodleian collection at Oxford), and the post-earthquake reconstruction. It’s one of those regional museums that actually tells a coherent story.

The walls themselves are walkable in stretches. The western section along the waterfront gives you views over the lagoon and the marina, and in the late afternoon, when the light goes golden over the water, it’s one of the better quiet moments you’ll find anywhere in the Algarve.

The Jewish Quarter: What Remains of Faro’s Mouraria

Faro had a substantial Jewish community for centuries, concentrated in the area known as the Mouraria — a name that reflects the post-Reconquista practice of assigning former Moorish neighborhoods to Jewish residents. The community here was significant enough that Faro became one of the first places in the Iberian Peninsula where Hebrew books were printed, with a printing press established in the 1480s. That detail alone reframes how this small city should be understood.

The expulsion of Jews from Portugal in 1497 — ordered by King Manuel I under pressure following the Spanish Inquisition — effectively erased the community. What remains today is fragmentary but genuinely moving. The old Jewish cemetery, tucked behind a gate near the waterfront, is one of the best-preserved Jewish burial grounds in Portugal. The oldest stones date from the early 17th century, when crypto-Jews who had converted publicly but maintained their faith privately began returning and burying their dead according to Jewish custom. The cemetery is managed by the local Jewish community and can be visited with advance arrangement, though access is sometimes possible through the tourist office.

Walking through the Mouraria district — the streets immediately southeast of the cathedral, running down toward what was once the city’s eastern gate — you can still read the medieval street plan. The lanes are narrow, the buildings press close, and the scale is entirely pedestrian. There’s no interpretive signage to speak of, which is part of what makes it feel authentic rather than reconstructed. A handful of plaques mark significant buildings, but mostly you’re using your own map-reading and some curiosity to piece it together.

The local tourist office has developed a Jewish heritage walking route that takes about ninety minutes and connects the cemetery, the former synagogue site, the printing press location, and several other points of interest. It’s worth picking up the map even if you prefer to wander at your own pace. Faro is beginning to develop this heritage more seriously as part of a broader effort to draw visitors beyond the beach season, so more formal guided tours are increasingly available, particularly from spring through autumn.

The Living City: Neighborhoods Beyond the Walls

Faro’s old town is the historical argument for visiting, but the city’s actual personality lives in the neighborhoods that sprawl beyond the medieval walls. Immediately outside the Arco da Vila, the Praça Francisco Gomes opens onto the waterfront gardens — a relaxed public space lined with palms and benches where locals of every age spend their afternoons. The marina curves around to the east, and the waterfront promenade connecting them is Faro’s main social artery.

The Baixa, Faro’s commercial downtown, runs north from the waterfront along Rua de Santo António — a pedestrianized shopping street that’s lively without being frantic. This is where you find the mix of chain stores, independent shops, and the kind of everyday commerce that tells you a place is genuinely inhabited. The covered market, the Mercado Municipal, sits just off this axis and is best visited in the morning when the fish stalls are at their busiest.

The university district, centered around the University of Algarve campus in the northern part of the city, gives Faro a demographic anchor that keeps it from becoming purely seasonal. During the academic year, the cafes and bars around the campus fill with students, and the city feels young and energetic in a way that resort towns rarely do. In summer, when students disperse, the city shifts but doesn’t empty — locals from across the Algarve use Faro as their service and shopping hub, so there’s always a lived-in hum.

The neighborhood of Bom João, to the east of the center, is where you find the quieter residential streets, local bakeries, and corner cafes where the coffee is strong and the pastries are fresh. It’s not a tourist destination in itself, but a half-hour walk through it gives you a more accurate picture of daily Faro than any museum visit will.

Eating in Faro: Fish, Cataplana, and the Gaps Between Meals

The Algarve has its own culinary identity, and Faro is where you eat it properly. The defining dish of the region is the cataplana — a clam-shaped copper pot that gives its name to the slow-cooked stews made inside it. A good cataplana de marisco (seafood) contains clams, prawns, and chunks of fish, cooked with white wine, tomato, onion, garlic, and coriander. It’s not a dish you eat quickly. It arrives at the table still sealed, is opened with ceremony, and the steam that escapes carries enough fragrance to justify the journey on its own.

Faro’s fish market supplies restaurants directly, which means the seafood here is genuinely fresh. Lingueirão (razor clams), grilled over charcoal with garlic and olive oil, are the bar snack that will change your understanding of what a bar snack can be. Conquilhas (small clams) sautéed with lemon and coriander are another local staple, often listed on chalkboard menus outside places that don’t bother with printed cards. Both are cheap, seasonal, and almost impossible to find at this quality anywhere else.

For lunch, locals head to the tascas — small, unambitious restaurants that serve set meals with bread, a soup, a main, and wine at prices that feel almost anachronistic by European standards. The tascas cluster around the Mercado Municipal and the streets east of Rua de Santo António. They don’t tend to have websites, their hours are shorter than you’d like, and they’re usually full by 1pm. Go early or expect to wait.

The evening eating culture in Faro starts late by northern European standards. Locals don’t sit down for dinner before 8pm, and many restaurants don’t hit their stride until 9. The waterfront has the predictable tourist-facing restaurants, but the better options are a few streets inland — look for places where the menu is handwritten on a board, the tables are close together, and the owner brings the wine themselves.

For pastries and coffee, the café culture in Faro is strong. Pastel de nata is everywhere, but look also for Dom Rodrigo, an Algarvian sweet made from egg yolk threads, almonds, and cinnamon wrapped in metallic foil — it’s intensely sweet, entirely regional, and sold in almost every bakery in town. The coffee is always espresso unless you specify otherwise, and it’s almost always good.

Ria Formosa: The Lagoon That Makes Faro Unique

Directly behind Faro’s waterfront lies one of Europe’s most important coastal ecosystems — the Ria Formosa Natural Park, a 60-kilometer stretch of lagoon, barrier islands, salt marshes, tidal flats, and channels that separates the city from the Atlantic Ocean. For most of Faro’s visitors, this is just the thing they cross on a ferry to get to the beach. That’s an underestimate of what it is.

The Ria Formosa is a working landscape. Salt is still harvested from traditional salinas here — the flat evaporation pans visible from any high point around the lagoon. Clams, oysters, and mussels are farmed in the channels, supplying much of what ends up on Faro’s restaurant tables. Bird populations are extraordinary: flamingos, spoonbills, purple herons, and dozens of wading species use the flats as feeding grounds year-round. In winter, the bird density is particularly remarkable, drawing serious birders from across Europe.

The barrier islands — Ilha Deserta, Ilha da Culatra, and Ilha de Faro among them — are accessible by ferry from Faro’s pier. Ilha Deserta (literally, deserted island) is exactly what it promises: a long sandbar with a single seafood restaurant at one end and nothing else for kilometers. Ilha da Culatra has a small fishing village with no cars and a calm-water beach on the lagoon side that families with children use almost exclusively. These islands get crowds in July and August, but the ferry schedule is regular and the experience doesn’t collapse under tourist pressure the way beach resorts on the main coast do.

Kayaking through the Ria Formosa channels is one of the better active options in the area — several operators run guided half-day tours that take you through sections of the lagoon you can’t access by ferry. Early morning departures avoid both the heat and the boat traffic and often produce the best wildlife sightings.

Day Trips: The Algarve That Tourism Forgot

Faro’s position at the eastern end of the Algarve and close to the Spanish border makes it an excellent base for reaching parts of the region that most visitors never see.

Tavira, 30 minutes east by train, is the day trip that most travelers who’ve done their research already know about — and it deserves the reputation. A Roman bridge, a Moorish castle, whitewashed churches with four-sided pyramid roofs unique to the eastern Algarve, and a quieter version of the lagoon-and-island geography you find around Faro. The town is small enough to walk entirely and pleasant enough to want to stay for dinner.

Castro Marim, another 20 minutes east toward the Spanish border, is almost entirely overlooked. It has a 14th-century castle, a smaller satellite fortress built by the Knights of Christ, and a salt marsh nature reserve surrounding it that’s among the best birding spots in the Algarve. The town itself is minimal, but the views from the castle across to Spain and down over the marshes are genuinely dramatic.

São Brás de Alportel, 15 minutes north into the hills by car or bus, sits in the foothills of the Serra do Caldeirão at the edge of the traditional Algarve interior. The town has a strong cork industry heritage — cork oaks cover the surrounding hills — and the Museu do Traje, an excellent folk costume museum, is housed in a 19th-century mansion. The café culture here is entirely local, and a lunch in São Brás of cataplana or black pork from the interior tastes different from the same dishes on the coast.

West along the coast, Olhão is just 8 minutes by train — technically a neighbor rather than a day trip — but its twin Moorish-influenced market buildings (one for fish, one for fruit and vegetables) and its North African-influenced architecture make it worth a separate morning visit. Olhão is where Faro goes to buy its fish seriously.

Getting Around Faro and the Algarve

Faro itself is easily walkable. The old town, waterfront, downtown, and most of the neighborhoods mentioned here are within comfortable walking distance of each other. The city is flat — a genuine relief in Portugal, where most historic centers involve hills — and the distances are short. You don’t need a car to experience Faro.

The Algarve’s rail line runs along the southern coast from Vila Real de Santo António at the Spanish border west to Lagos, with Faro roughly in the middle. Trains are cheap, reasonably punctual, and connect you to most of the coastal towns and the day trip destinations mentioned above. The train station in Faro is a ten-minute walk from the old town and the waterfront. Tickets can be bought at the station or through the Comboios de Portugal app.

For destinations inland or off the rail line, the regional bus network (operated by Proximo and Eva Transportes) covers most of the Algarve. Service is less frequent than the train, particularly on weekends, but it reaches villages and towns that the rail line doesn’t.

If you plan to explore the interior — the Serra do Caldeirão, the Alentejo border region, or the western Algarve beyond Lagos — a rental car makes a significant difference. Faro Airport has all major rental companies, and rates are competitive. Driving in the Algarve is straightforward outside of the summer coastal congestion on the EN125.

Ferries to the barrier islands depart from the pier immediately below the old town walls. The main operator is Animaris, with regular departures throughout the day in summer and reduced service in winter. Schedules are posted at the pier and on the operator’s website.

Practical Faro: When to Go, Where to Stay, What to Skip

When to visit: Faro works in almost every season, which is one of its advantages over purely beach-oriented destinations. Spring (April–May) is ideal — warm enough to eat outside, quiet enough to have the old town largely to yourself, and the Ria Formosa is alive with birds. Autumn (September–October) offers the same advantages after the summer crowds disperse. July and August are hot (regularly above 35°C), but Faro doesn’t suffer from the overcrowding that hits resorts like Albufeira — the city functions normally, and the ferry queues to the islands are the worst of it. Winter is mild by northern European standards (rarely below 10°C), the light is extraordinary, and you’ll have the place entirely to yourself. The Christmas market on the waterfront is small but genuinely local.

Getting from the airport: Faro Airport is Portugal’s third-busiest and sits just 6 kilometers from the city center. A taxi to the old town takes about 10 minutes and costs around €10–15. A dedicated airport bus (Line 14/16 depending on current routing — confirm on arrival) connects the airport to the bus terminal in the center, running roughly every 30–45 minutes and costing under €3. Many hotels in the city center are within a short taxi ride, and given the low fares, the taxi option is often the most practical for arrivals with luggage.

Where to stay: The old town itself has a small number of boutique guesthouses inside the walls — these fill quickly and are worth booking months ahead in summer, but deliver a genuinely unusual experience of sleeping in a medieval Portuguese city center. The waterfront and marina area has several mid-range hotels with lagoon views. The streets between the train station and the old town offer the widest range of budget accommodation, from well-run hostels to small family hotels, and keep you close enough to everything that the location never becomes inconvenient.

What to skip: The resort strip west of Faro — Quarteira, Vilamoura, Albufeira — has its audience, but it has nothing to do with the city you’ll discover by staying in Faro proper. Organized “Algarve jeep safaris” are marketed heavily from Faro and are largely mediocre. The seafront restaurants immediately adjacent to the ferry pier are tourist traps in the most literal sense — not bad enough to ruin a meal, but not good enough to bother with when the tascas are a five-minute walk away. And resist the temptation to treat Faro purely as a transit hub — the airport is designed to make you think the city is just a gateway. It’s considerably more than that.

Faro rewards the kind of traveler who notices things: the storks nesting in Roman-era walls, the Hebrew tombstones behind a locked gate, the copper cataplana arriving at a table of locals at 9pm on a Tuesday. It’s a city that doesn’t perform for visitors because it doesn’t need to. That lack of performance is exactly what makes it worth your time.

Explore more
Faro’s Ria Formosa Natural Park: Barrier Islands, Lagoons & How to Explore Them
Day Trips from Faro: Salt Marshes, Tavira & the Eastern Algarve’s Quieter Coast

📷 Featured image by micheile henderson on Unsplash.