Ponta Delgada, São Miguel (Azores), Azores

The Great Azorean City


The Shadow of the Mother Church
Dusk light above the shadow of the base of the church.
Statue of Joaquim Silvestre Serrão
Architectural and historical detail of the capital of the island of São Miguel.
Shadows and Reflections
Shadows and light at the end of the day in Ponta Delgada.
Looking for Cetaceans
Cetacean search vessel full of passengers.
Beira-Mar house
Buildings and volcanic mound on the outskirts of Ponta Delgada.
Mother Church or San Sebastian
Shadows against the white of the main church of Ponta Delgada.
The Marginal
Clouds over the Ponta Delgada waterfront.
With All Saints
Couple strolls in front of the Church of Todos-os-Santos.
The Prison Establishment
Ponta Delgada's seaside prison.
The Valentine's Garden
Harmony between nature and the architecture of Jardim dos Namorados.
Through the Doors
The architectural harmony of the great city of the Azores.
Sea Mural
Mural decorates an alley in Ponta Delgada.
golden sunset
Ocaso gilds illuminated corners of Ponta Delgada.
The Town Halls
Statue in the middle of the buildings that delimit the City Hall of Ponta Delgada.
Ponta-Delgadense Street
Cityscape, softly lit.
Historic and Modern Ponta Delgada
The new and the old share a border in the capital of São Miguel.
The Gates of Ponta Delgada
Twilight lends color to the symbolic entrance to Ponta Delgada.
During the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries, Ponta Delgada became the most populous city and the economic and administrative capital of the Azores. There we find the history and modernism of the archipelago hand in hand.

One of the obstacles that Ponta Delgada always encounters, in terms of its notoriety, is being surrounded by Great Azorean Eden of São Miguel.

There are so many and so stunning the natural scenery around that, all too often, those who land with the program to discover the island, end up ignoring the port city that serves as their gateway.

In opposite directions, there are dream places like Sete Cidades and its lagoons.

The unbelievable panoramas from the viewpoints of Boca do Inferno and Vista do Rei, to name just a few.

There are also the thermal baths of Caldeira Velha and Lagoa do Fogo. At the eastern end of the island, the Vale das Furnas and its sulfurous and surreal world. We could prolong the references for a few more paragraphs, but we would repeat the injustice.

Instead, let's focus on Ponta Delgada's unique and insular beauty.

The Soft Sunset of the South of São Miguel

The memory of how the last light of day turned yellow and almost orange over the city remained with us forever.

How it overlapped the creeping shadow and seemed to set fire to the tops of the old churches, their towers, the pediments and the crosses that crown them.

Projected from the west, every late afternoon, the afterglow takes over Ponta Delgada, its streets and houses.

By the effects and ways of the light, it carries the black of the silhouettes.

And it highlights the elegance of the architecture, the sacred and the profane, which, in Ponta Delgada, prove to be complicated to untangle.

It precedes the tri-arch that makes Portas da Cidade, a black-and-white sidewalk, full of waves and stringed that keep our minds moored to the Atlantic.

When the sun falls behind the ocean, artificial lighting spreads the warm twilight.

Then, the arched doors stand out in an electric blue that overshadows the fading sky.

The Arrival of Religious Orders and Corresponding Christian Temples

Historic Ponta Delgada was built in basalt and limestone, the most convenient materials at hand.

This lithic dichotomy was favored by the usual religious orders – Jesuits, Franciscans, Augustinians, Gratians and others – that settled and blessed the city since the early days of São Miguel's colonization.

On the other side of the Portas, the Igreja Matriz de São Sebastião stands out from its own pavement of stars, in a baroque architecture, with a lot of Manueline style.

Or, according to the perspective, instead.

In any case, it holds one of the greatest Azorean treasures of sacred art, statuary, goldwork and vestments, including two dalmatics and two chasubles dating back six centuries.

To the northwest, a short distance away, stand the Church of Nª Srª da Conceição and the homonymous monastery. The neighboring convent of Nª Srª da Esperança accommodates another sacred treasure, the Senhor Santo Cristo Treasury, made of gold, studded with precious stones and, accordingly, another of the most valuable religious heritage sites in Portugal.

Nearby, we are also surprised by the intricate Church of Todos-os-Santos, next to the Antero de Quental Garden, also known as Jardim dos Namorados, in which two or three couples justify their baptism.

The reverence for God and the temples of his worship do not stop there. There is also the Ermida da Santíssima Trindade, close to that of São Braz.

And, closing off the historic center to the north and east, the Church of Nª Srª de Fátima, the Chapels of Nª Srª das Mercês, Sant'Ana and Mãe de Deus and, already almost by the sea, the Church of Saint Peter.

The liberal revolution inaugurated in 1820, passed decisively through Ponta Delgada. From there the forces of D. Pedro IV who laid siege to Porto.

The triumph of the Liberals dictated, in 1834, the extinction of religious orders.

As we continued to admire, wandering around the historic centre, the monumental legacy of its buildings of retreat and worship remains in Ponta Delgada.

At Mass hours, some of them welcome the largest concentrations of Ponta Delgadas that we come across. The summer months have passed when we visit the city.

With less than seventy thousand inhabitants, spread over a considerable area of ​​the southwest of the island, Ponta Delgada does not seem to be a city with large crowds.

In fact, if it weren't for a geological whim, the capital of São Miguel would be different.

It would resist about 25km to the east.

The Rise of Ponta Delgada, accelerated by the Misfortune of Vila Franca do Campo

The settlement of São Miguel was carried out from 1444 onwards, part of a captaincy in the southeast of the Azores, which also included the island of Santa Maria.

In Ponta Delgada, noble men began to settle in, with possessions and influence in the destinies of São Miguel.

At that time, the main town, both on São Miguel and on the Azores, was Vila Franca do Campo, the seat of the Captaincy.

In 1525, it was destroyed by a powerful earthquake that went down in history as the Subversion of Vila Franca.

It is estimated that the earthquake killed more than XNUMX people.

It made life in the village unfeasible and forced the people who believed in God and the religious who guided them to move.

Most of it went to Ponta Delgada, a town that developed as a result of the customs created there in 1518, but above all, due to the misfortune and demotion of Vila Franca.

From the Village of Santa Clara, to the Capital of São Miguel

The village was not always called Ponta Delgada.

For a time, the terminology fluctuated between the sacred and the profane. Gaspar Frutuoso, one of the essential chroniclers of the settlement of São Miguel described it in the archaic Portuguese of the time “Ponta Delgada is so called because it is located next to a point of biscuit stone, thin and not thick like others on the island, almost level with the sea, which later, as a chapel of Santa Clara was built very close to it, called Santa Clara point…".

We estimate that the scenario explained corresponded to the current area of ​​coast to the south of the Santa Clara Lighthouse, an already secular light of the homonymous parish that, due to a storm in December 1942 that had destroyed the port of Ponta Delgada, was transferred from Lisbon, of the Tower of Belém that, until then, had sheltered it.

After two decades of hurried reconstruction of everything that had been lost in the former capital, convinced by the administrative importance of his office of Juiz de Fora (unique in the Azores) and the port, Dom João III decreed Ponta Delgada as a city.

Equipped with the São Brás fort, the new capital of São Miguel was able to defend itself from pirate attacks.

He got used to receiving and serving the ships destined for India, in a logistical and commercial dynamic that attracted a considerable number of businessmen, their employees and servants.

And sailed an inexorable wave of bonanza and favourability.

The Fertility of the Lands of São Miguel and the Engenho dos Micaelenses

As with most of the island, the volcanic lands around it were fertile. They produced wheat, heather, vines, sweet potatoes, corn, yams, pastel, flax, oranges and even the precious sugar cane.

Oranges, in particular, became a product exported in huge quantities to the main foreign “customer” of the Azores, England.

Over time, the island's dedicated farmers secured highly profitable new crops, tobacco, swordfish, beetroot, chicory and, of course, tea and pineapple, both of which still hold a prominent place on São Miguel, merged with the most recent and profitable of all activities, tourism.

In 1861, following an intense demand to which Antero de Quental adhered with his famous article “Need for a Dock on the island of São Miguel”, the authorities started the work on the new artificial port of Ponta Delgada, which favored exports of all those products and more.

Cetaceans, Tourism and Evolution the Largest Azorean City

When, in recent decades, the rest of the world discovered and valued the so-called “European Hawaii”, the port of Ponta Delgada started to serve for the lightning incursions in which local operators take visitors to meet the cetaceans.

Of the abundant dolphins, whales and sperm whales that outsiders yearn to admire.

We also left there aboard a speedboat with powerful engines, at such a speed that we feared to run overboard.

We accompany groups of devilish dolphins and sperm whales that the people of São Miguel call by their own names.

With the summer already behind us, the whales were already traveling to other parts of the Atlantic.

We therefore anticipate the return to the calm waters of the port, to Baixa de São Pedro and to the Marina that forms the coastal border between the Historic Center and the modernized east of Ponta Delgada, with its hotels, parks and bathing areas that extend to the imminence of the Rosto de Cão Islet.

In full evolution and expansion of the XNUMXth century, despite its natural and rural environment, Ponta Delgada became the eighth largest Portuguese city.

In recent years, many of the continent's cities have surpassed it both in size and in number of inhabitants. It remains the largest Azorean city and the economic and administrative capital of the Azores.

Several opinions say that it became the true capital of the archipelago. It is an old insular dispute in which no continental should interfere.

Vale das Furnas, São Miguel (Azores)

The Azorean Heat of Vale das Furnas

We were surprised, on the biggest island of the Azores, with a caldera cut by small farms, massive and deep to the point of sheltering two volcanoes, a huge lagoon and almost two thousand people from São Miguel. Few places in the archipelago are, at the same time, as grand and welcoming as the green and steaming Vale das Furnas.
São Miguel (Azores), Azores

São Miguel Island: Stunning Azores, By Nature

An immaculate biosphere that the Earth's entrails mold and soften is displayed, in São Miguel, in a panoramic format. São Miguel is the largest of the Portuguese islands. And it is a work of art of Nature and Man in the middle of the North Atlantic planted.
Pico Island, Azores

Pico Island: the Azores Volcano with the Atlantic at its Feet

By a mere volcanic whim, the youngest Azorean patch projects itself into the rock and lava apogee of Portuguese territory. The island of Pico is home to its highest and sharpest mountain. But not only. It is a testament to the resilience and ingenuity of the Azoreans who tamed this stunning island and surrounding ocean.
Santa Maria, Azores

Santa Maria: the Azores Mother Island

It was the first in the archipelago to emerge from the bottom of the sea, the first to be discovered, the first and only to receive Cristovão Colombo and a Concorde. These are some of the attributes that make Santa Maria special. When we visit it, we find many more.
Horta, Azores

The City that Gives the North to the Atlantic

The world community of sailors is well aware of the relief and happiness of seeing the Pico Mountain, and then Faial and the welcoming of Horta Bay and Peter Café Sport. The rejoicing does not stop there. In and around the city, there are white houses and a green and volcanic outpouring that dazzles those who have come so far.
Capelinhos Volcano, Faial, Azores

On the trail of the Capelinhos Mistery

From one coast of the island to the opposite one, through the mists, patches of pasture and forests typical of the Azores, we discover Faial and the Mystery of its most unpredictable volcano.
Graciosa, Azores

Her Grace the Graciosa

Finally, we will disembark in Graciosa, our ninth island in the Azores. Even if less dramatic and verdant than its neighbors, Graciosa preserves an Atlantic charm that is its own. Those who have the privilege of living it, take from this island of the central group an esteem that remains forever.
Corvo, Azores

The Improbable Atlantic Shelter of Corvo Island

17 km2 of a volcano sunk in a verdant caldera. A solitary village based on a fajã. Four hundred and thirty souls snuggled by the smallness of their land and the glimpse of their neighbor Flores. Welcome to the most fearless of the Azorean islands.
São Jorge, Azores

From Fajã to Fajã

In the Azores, strips of habitable land at the foot of large cliffs abound. No other island has as many fajãs as the more than 70 in the slender and elevated São Jorge. It was in them that the jorgenses settled. Their busy Atlantic lives rest on them.
Pico Island, Azores

The Island East of the Pico Mountain

As a rule, whoever arrives at Pico disembarks on its western side, with the volcano (2351m) blocking the view on the opposite side. Behind Pico Mountain, there is a whole long and dazzling “east” of the island that takes time to unravel.
Angra do Heroismo, Terceira (Azores), Azores

Heroina do Mar, from Noble People, Brave and Immortal City

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PN Hwange, Zimbabwe

The Legacy of the Late Cecil Lion

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Annapurna Circuit: 5th - Ngawal a BragaNepal

Towards the Nepalese Braga

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Visitors at Talisay Ruins, Negros Island, Philippines
Architecture & Design
Talisay City, Philippines

Monument to a Luso-Philippine Love

At the end of the 11th century, Mariano Lacson, a Filipino farmer, and Maria Braga, a Portuguese woman from Macau, fell in love and got married. During the pregnancy of what would be her 2th child, Maria succumbed to a fall. Destroyed, Mariano built a mansion in his honor. In the midst of World War II, the mansion was set on fire, but the elegant ruins that endured perpetuate their tragic relationship.
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Adventure
Tongariro, New Zealand

The Volcanoes of All Discords

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Ice cream, Moriones Festival, Marinduque, Philippines
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Marinduque, Philippines

When the Romans Invade the Philippines

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The Island of Success and Monotony

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An Uzbekistan's Breadwinner

In one of the many bakeries in Margilan, worn out by the intense heat of the tandyr oven, the baker Maruf'Jon works half-baked like the distinctive traditional breads sold throughout Uzbekistan
Culture
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The Pueblos del Sur Locainas, Their Dances and Co.

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Prayer flags in Ghyaru, Nepal
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From Nightmare to Dazzle

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Probing the Capital Tobago

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Viti levu, Fiji

Islands on the edge of Islands

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St. Trinity Church, Kazbegi, Georgia, Caucasus
Winter White
Kazbegi, Georgia

God in the Caucasus Heights

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Kukenam reward
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Mount Roraima, Venezuela

Time Travel to the Lost World of Mount Roraima

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Coron, Busuanga, Philippines

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Sheki, Azerbaijan

autumn in the caucasus

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Kiomizudera, Kyoto, a Millennial Japan almost lost
UNESCO World Heritage
Kyoto, Japan

An Almost Lost Millennial Japan

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Ooty, India

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Cargo Cabo Santa Maria, Boa Vista Island, Cape Verde, Sal, Evoking the Sahara
Beaches
Boa Vista Island, Cape Verde

Boa Vista Island: Atlantic waves, Dunas do Sara

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Kongobuji Temple
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Mount Koya, Japan

Halfway to Nirvana

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Train Kuranda train, Cairns, Queensland, Australia
On Rails
Cairns-Kuranda, Australia

Train to the Middle of the Jungle

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Christian believers leaving a church, Upolu, Western Samoa
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Upolu, Samoa  

The Broken Heart of Polynesia

The imagery of the paradisiacal South Pacific is unquestionable in Samoa, but its tropical beauty does not pay the bills for either the nation or the inhabitants. Anyone who visits this archipelago finds a people divided between subjecting themselves to tradition and the financial stagnation or uprooting themselves in countries with broader horizons.
Coin return
Daily life
Dawki, India

Dawki, Dawki, Bangladesh on sight

We descended from the high and mountainous lands of Meghalaya to the flats to the south and below. There, the translucent and green stream of the Dawki forms the border between India and Bangladesh. In a damp heat that we haven't felt for a long time, the river also attracts hundreds of Indians and Bangladeshis in a picturesque escape.
PN Tortuguero, Costa Rica, public boat
Wildlife
PN Tortuguero, Costa Rica

The Flooded Costa Rica of Tortuguero

The Caribbean Sea and the basins of several rivers bathe the northeast of the Tica nation, one of the wettest and richest areas in flora and fauna in Central America. Named after the green turtles nest in its black sands, Tortuguero stretches inland for 312 km.2 of stunning aquatic jungle.
Passengers, scenic flights-Southern Alps, New Zealand
Scenic Flights
Aoraki / Mount Cook, New Zealand

The Aeronautical Conquest of the Southern Alps

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