Sagres Point ( Ponta de Sagres, , from the Latin Promontorium Sacrum ‘Holy Promontory’) is a windswept shelf-like promontory located in the southwest Algarve region of southern Portugal. Only 4 km to the west and 3 km to the north lies Cape St. Vincent (Cabo de São Vicente), which is usually taken as the southwesternmost tip of Europe. The vicinity of Sagres Point and Cape St. Vincent has been used for religious purposes since Neolithic times, to which standing menhirs near Vila do Bispo, a few miles from both points, attest.
Strabo reports (Book 3.1.4) as follows:
No part of Cape St. Vincent fits this description, but on the eastern side of Sagres Point is a harbor, Baleeira, port of the modern town of Sagres, protected by four small islands in a line (the tiny Martinhal Islets) visible in satellite imagery. At the far eastern end of the beach of Martinhal, erosion of the cliffs has exposed a series of Roman pottery kilns for fabricating transport amphoras and roof tiles.
Henry the Navigator employed cartographers, such as Jehuda Cresques, to help him chart the coast of Mauretania in the wake of voyages he had caused to be made to there. He also engaged an expert map and instrument-maker, Jayme of Majorca, so that his captains might have the best nautical information. This probably led to the legend of the Nautical School of Sagres (although a "school" also means a group of followers). There was no centre of navigational science or any supposed observatory, if compared to the modern definition of "observatory" or "navigational centre". The centre of his expeditions was actually at Lagos, further to the east along the Algarve coast. Later Portuguese voyages left from Belém, just west of Lisbon.
This was a time of many important discoveries: cartography was being refined with the use of newly devised instruments, such as an improved astrolabe and improved sundial, were regularly being updated and extended, and a revolutionary type of Ship known as the caravel was designed.
Prince Henry built a chapel next to his house in 1459, as he began to spend more time in the Sagres area in his later years. He died at Sagres on 13 November 1460.
The exact location of Henry's School of Navigation is not known (it is popularly believed to have been destroyed by the 1755 Lisbon earthquake).
The much-restored church Nossa Senhora da Graça dates from 1579. It replaced the original church of Henry the Navigator of 1459. It was also damaged by the earthquake of 1755. Some alterations to the church were made, such as the building of a new bell tower over the old charnel house of the cemetery. There are still a set of tombstones present. Inside this unpretentious church, the 17th century Baroque retable above the altar originates from the Capela de Santa Catarina do Forte de Belixe (St. Catherine's Chapel in Belixe Fortress), while the polychrome statues of St. Vincent and St. Francis were once part of the Franciscan convent on the Cape St. Vincent.
Next to the church stands a replica stone standard ( padrão), used by the explorers to claim a newly discovered territory.
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