Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Portugal's first printed works - books in Hebrew made by a Jewish printer - came from
Faro in 1487.
A city from 1540, Faro had a brief golden age that slunk to a halt in 1596, during Span-
ish rule. Troops under the Earl of Essex, en route to England from Spain in 1597,
plundered the city and carried off hundreds of priceless theological works from the bish-
op's palace, now part of the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
Battered Faro was rebuilt only to be shattered by an earthquake in 1722 and then almost
flattened in 1755. Most of what you see today was built postquake, though the historic
centre largely survived. In 1834 Faro became the Algarve's capital.
