Ponta da Piedade

Why go

Ponta da Piedade is a rocky headland on the coast of Lagos municipality, south of the town, in the parish of São Gonçalo de Lagos. The Municipality of Lagos says that near the lighthouse, which it describes as almost a century old, a long stairway leads down to the sea, where local boatmen take passengers to see the grottoes and the shapes the sea has carved in the Miocene rock. It names some of those shapes as local people know them, such as 'a balança', 'a cozinha', 'o gigante' and 'o sapato'. This record is the headland itself, not the boat trips or the wider coastal karst geosite named after it.