Facts about Portugal
Portugal occupies the western edge of the Iberian Peninsula, with borders that have barely moved since the thirteenth century, making it one of the oldest nation states in Europe. From a small Atlantic base it launched the sea voyages that opened European routes to India and Brazil, and it kept the last of that empire until 1999.
- Population (2025)
- 11.4 million
- Area
- 92,212 km²
- Capital
- Lisbon
- Currency
- Euro (EUR)
- Official language
- Portuguese
- Highest point
- Mount Pico, 2,351 m
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The Tagus divides the country in two. North of it the land is green, hilly and densely settled, rising to the Serra da Estrela and cut by the terraced valley of the Douro where port wine grapes are grown. South of the river the Alentejo opens into wide plains of cork oak and wheat, and the Algarve coast at the southern tip is a line of cliffs and sheltered coves. The Azores and Madeira, both volcanic Atlantic archipelagos, are autonomous regions of Portugal.
Lisbon spreads over hills above the Tagus estuary and is the capital and largest city, with Porto at the mouth of the Douro the industrial and commercial center of the north. Coimbra holds one of the oldest universities in Europe, Braga is the religious capital, and Sintra’s palaces sit in the wooded hills west of Lisbon. Tourism, concentrated in the Algarve, Lisbon and Madeira, has grown into one of the largest sectors of the economy.
Geography of Portugal
Portugal is a strip about 560 kilometers long down the Atlantic edge of Iberia, split by the Tagus into a green, hilly north and the wide, dry plains of the south. Far out in the ocean, the Azores and Madeira are volcanic islands that are as much a part of the country as Lisbon.
- How big is Portugal, and what is the land like?
- About 92,000 km², including the islands. North of the Tagus the country is mountainous and wet, rising to the Serra da Estrela at 1,993 meters; south of it the Alentejo is rolling plain, and the Algarve coast at the bottom is cliffs and coves.
- What is the capital of Portugal, and what are the other big cities?
- Lisbon, on the estuary of the Tagus, at the center of a metropolitan area of nearly 3 million. Porto at the mouth of the Douro is the city of the north, while Braga and Coimbra are important regional centers.
- What is the highest mountain in Portugal?
- Mount Pico in the Azores, a volcano rising 2,351 meters straight out of the Atlantic. On the mainland the highest point is Torre in the Serra da Estrela, at 1,993 meters.
History of Portugal
Portugal became a kingdom in 1143 and has kept nearly the same borders since the thirteenth century. Its sailors opened the sea routes to India and Brazil, and its twentieth century ended a long dictatorship with a revolution in which almost nobody was killed.
- How old is Portugal as a country?
- Afonso Henriques was recognized as king in 1143, and the Algarve, the last of the south, was taken from the Moors in 1249. The frontier with Spain has barely moved since, which makes Portugal one of the oldest nation states in Europe.
- What did Portugal do in the Age of Discovery?
- Portuguese ships worked down the coast of Africa through the fifteenth century, Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, and Vasco da Gama reached India by sea in 1498. Pedro Álvares Cabral landed in Brazil in 1500, and the empire that followed reached from Brazil to Macau.
- What was the Carnation Revolution?
- The military coup of 25 April 1974 that ended the Estado Novo dictatorship begun under Salazar. Soldiers put carnations in their rifle barrels, the regime fell in a day with very few deaths, and the African colonies became independent within the next two years.
The Portuguese language
Portuguese grew out of the Latin spoken in the northwest of Iberia and is now spoken by more than 250 million people, most of them in Brazil. European Portuguese sounds very different from the Brazilian kind, clipping its unstressed vowels until whole syllables nearly disappear.
- How many people speak Portuguese?
- More than 250 million, which puts it among the ten most spoken languages in the world. It is official in nine countries, from Brazil and Portugal to Angola, Mozambique and East Timor.
- Is European Portuguese different from Brazilian Portuguese?
- Mainly in sound. European Portuguese swallows its unstressed vowels, so it can sound closer to a Slavic language than to Spanish, while Brazilian Portuguese keeps them open. Spelling was largely unified by an agreement signed in 1990, and some vocabulary and grammar still differ.
- Can Portuguese and Spanish speakers understand each other?
- In writing, a good deal. In speech it runs more easily from Portuguese to Spanish than the other way, because Portuguese has more vowel sounds and softer consonants that a Spanish ear does not expect.
Culture of Portugal
Fado, the mournful song of Lisbon and Coimbra, is on UNESCO’s list of intangible heritage, and blue and white azulejo tiles cover churches, stations, palaces and whole house fronts. The Portuguese word for it all is saudade, a longing for something absent that may never come back.
- What is fado?
- A song form from Lisbon, sung by one voice over the Portuguese guitar, usually about loss and the sea. Amália Rodrigues made it famous around the world in the mid twentieth century, and UNESCO added it to its intangible heritage list in 2011.
- What are azulejos?
- Painted, glazed ceramic tiles, used in Portugal since the fifteenth century on walls inside and out. The blue and white panels in churches and railway stations, such as São Bento in Porto, tell whole stories in tile.
- What does saudade mean?
- A deep longing for someone or something that is gone and may not return, felt with some pleasure in the memory as well as sadness. It is often called untranslatable and is the emotion fado is built on.
Economy of Portugal
Portugal joined the European Community in 1986 and adopted the euro in 1999. After a bailout during the debt crisis it has become one of the fastest-growing tourist destinations in Europe, and hydropower and wind supply a large share of its electricity, alongside growing solar generation.
- What does Portugal export?
- Cars and car parts, machinery, clothing and shoes, and refined fuels, most of it to Spain, France, Germany and the United States. It is also the world’s largest producer of cork, most of it from the cork oak forests of the Alentejo.
- How important is tourism to Portugal?
- Tourism has become one of the largest sectors of the economy, concentrated in Lisbon, Porto, the Algarve and Madeira, and the number of foreign visitors is now far larger than the population of the country.
- What happened to Portugal in the euro crisis?
- It took a bailout of 78 billion euros from the EU and the IMF in 2011 and went through three years of spending cuts. It left the program in 2014, and has since brought its public debt down steadily.
Politics of Portugal
Portugal is a semi-presidential republic: an elected president with real but limited powers, and a prime minister who governs with the support of a single-chamber parliament. The constitution dates from 1976, two years after the revolution that restored democracy.
- Who runs Portugal, the president or the prime minister?
- The prime minister runs the government. The president is elected directly for five years, can veto laws and dissolve parliament, and commands the armed forces.
- What is the Portuguese parliament called?
- The Assembly of the Republic, a single chamber of 230 members elected by proportional representation. It sits in the São Bento Palace in Lisbon, a former Benedictine monastery.
- When did Portugal become a republic?
- On 5 October 1910, when a revolution ended the monarchy of the Braganza dynasty. The First Republic was unstable and ended in a coup in 1926, which led to the Estado Novo.
Nature and wildlife of Portugal
The cork oak woodland of the Alentejo, the montado, is one of the richest farmed landscapes in Europe, and the Serra da Estrela still carries the marks of Ice Age glaciers. Offshore, the waters around the Azores are among the best places in the world to see whales.
- Does Portugal have national parks?
- One: Peneda-Gerês in the far north, created in 1971, a granite upland of oak woods and wild ponies, where the Iberian wolf still hunts. Dozens of natural parks and reserves protect the rest, from the Serra da Estrela to the Ria Formosa lagoon in the Algarve.
- What animals live in Portugal?
- Iberian wolves in the north, griffon vultures over the gorges of the upper Douro, Iberian lynx reintroduced to the Guadiana valley in the south, and large numbers of migrating birds on the estuaries. The Sado estuary has a resident group of bottlenose dolphins.
- What is special about Madeira’s forest?
- Madeira keeps the largest surviving stretch of laurisilva, the laurel forest that covered southern Europe millions of years ago. It is on the World Heritage list.
Portuguese food
Portuguese cooking is built on the sea and on what the old empire brought home: salt cod, grilled sardines, piri-piri, and more egg-yolk pastries than seems possible. Port from the Douro and Madeira from its island are two of the great fortified wines of the world.
- What is bacalhau?
- Salted, dried cod, the national dish, and the Portuguese say there are 365 ways to cook it, one for every day of the year. Most of it is caught in the far north Atlantic and imported.
- What is a pastel de nata?
- A custard tart in flaky pastry, blistered on top, said to have been invented by monks at the Jerónimos Monastery in Belém. When the monasteries closed in 1834 the recipe passed to a sugar refinery next door, and the Pastéis de Belém bakery still makes them there.
- What is the difference between port and Madeira?
- Both are fortified with brandy. Port is made from grapes grown in the Douro valley and can age there or in Vila Nova de Gaia, across the river from Porto. Madeira is made on its island and is deliberately heated as it ages, which is why an opened bottle keeps for years.
Landmarks of Portugal
Portugal has more than fifteen World Heritage Sites, from the palaces of Sintra and the Manueline monuments of Belém to the port wine terraces of the Douro. Most of the best known are within an hour of Lisbon or Porto.
- What is the Pena Palace?
- A nineteenth-century Romantic palace painted red and yellow, built by King Ferdinand II on a hilltop above Sintra on the ruins of a monastery. The whole cultural landscape of Sintra is a World Heritage Site.
- What is Manueline architecture?
- The late Gothic style of the reign of Manuel I, around 1500, carved with ropes, anchors, coral and armillary spheres from the voyages that paid for it. The Jerónimos Monastery and the Belém Tower in Lisbon are its best examples.
- What is there to see in Porto?
- The riverside Ribeira quarter and the old center are on the World Heritage list, along with the Dom Luís I bridge across the Douro. Across the river, the port wine lodges of Vila Nova de Gaia are open for tastings.
People of Portugal
About 11.4 million people lived in Portugal in 2025, and several million more of Portuguese descent live abroad, from France and Switzerland to Brazil and the United States. The population is among the oldest in Europe, and new arrivals from Brazil and elsewhere have been growing it again.
- How many people live in Portugal?
- About 11.4 million in 2025, with the largest concentrations around Lisbon and Porto and along the coast between them. The interior near the Spanish border has been emptying for decades.
- Why do so many Portuguese live abroad?
- Emigration has been part of Portuguese life for centuries, and about 1.5 million people left in the 1960s and early 1970s alone, many of them for France. Portuguese communities are large in France, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Brazil, the United States and Canada.
- What religion are most Portuguese?
- Most are Roman Catholic, though fewer go to Mass every week than a generation ago. The shrine at Fátima, where three children reported visions of the Virgin Mary in 1917, is one of the great Catholic pilgrimage sites of the world.