Algarve historical timeline

The Algarve's coast was settled by Phoenician traders from around 1000 BC, who founded ports along the shore, and later by the Cynetes, an Iron Age Celtic or pre-Celtic people. Moorish forces conquered the region from 711, renaming it al-Gharb, "the West," the origin of its modern name, and made Silves their regional capital; under Moorish rule from the 9th to 12th centuries, Silves prospered as a major stronghold and cultural centre. The Portuguese Reconquista reached the Algarve in 1238, and by 1242 the forces of the Santiago Order had taken both Silves and Tavira; the Moors who remained rather than flee were eventually expelled from Portugal in 1496.

In the 15th century, Prince Henry the Navigator based himself near Lagos, directing the maritime expeditions that opened the Portuguese Age of Discovery; from Lagos, the navigator Gil Eanes set sail in 1434 to become the first European to round West Africa's Cape Bojador, breaking a psychological barrier that had long limited exploration south. Lagos became the Algarve's capital in 1577, a status it held until the catastrophic 1755 Lisbon earthquake, whose epicentre lay in the Atlantic just southwest of the Algarve's own Cape St. Vincent, destroyed most of the region's towns. Faro, less severely affected, became the Algarve's new administrative capital in 1756 and has remained so since. Portuguese monarchs held the title "King of the Algarves," plural, reflecting the region's historic status as a nominally separate kingdom, until the practice fell into disuse with the end of the monarchy in 1910.