Lagos - History

The settlement of Lagos dates back to at least Phoenician and Greek times with evidence showing both groups living and trading at the mouth of the muddy Rio Bensafrim. The Romans followed and named the settlement Lacobriga while the Moors called it Zawaia.  

King Afonso III captured the area from the Moors in 1241, but it wasn't until 1249 that he claimed it definitively for the Reconquista. In 1415 a giant fleet set sail from Lagos under the command of the 21-year-old Infante Dom Henrique aka Prince Henry the Navigator to seize Ceuta in Morocco, thereby setting the stage for the Portuguese Age of Discovery.

The shipyards of Lagos built and launched Prince Henry’s caravels, and Henry split his time between his trading company in Lagos and his navigation school at Sagres.  Gil Eanes left Lagos in 1434 as commander of the first ship to round West Africa’s Cape Bojador. Others continued to bring back information about the African coast, along with ivory, gold and slaves. In 1444 Lagos gained the dubious distinction of having hosted the first sale of Africans as slaves to Europeans, and the town grew into a slave-trading centre and offers a museum to record that shady history.  

It was also from Lagos in 1578 that Dom Sebastião, along with the cream of the Portuguese nobility and an army of Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and German buccaneers, left on a disastrous crusade to Christianize North Africa and which ended in a debacle at El-Ksar el Kebir in Morocco. Francis Drake inflicted heavy damage on Lagos a few years later, in 1587.

Lagos was the Algarve’s high-profile capital from 1576 until 1755, when the famous and immensely destructive earthquake flattened Lagos and large parts of Portugal.  

Today Lagos' coastline with its spectacular beaches drives its economy with thousands of tourists each year.