It is one of the most beautiful cities in the western Algarve. In the past it was the capital of the Muslim kingdom in Portuguese soil.
The history of Silves is written in stone dating back to the Phoenicians and later the Romans, but it is their Muslim heritage that has left its mark on the highest hill of this timeless city. The red castle dominates the urban landscape, a silent witness thru centuries of immense social upheaval and bloody battles between Arab and Christian kings who aspired to conquer this rich trading post at the mouth of the river Arade. The interior is dominated by a giant tank with a dome bulged and five round arches. At the top may be see the city and the surrounding hills, prefiguring the difficulty of its conquest, which almost led to its destruction such was the violence of the attacks. But were not the human forces which have destroyed and dictated the decline of al Xelb carefully planned by Muslim caliphs, was the 1755 earthquake that devastated this metropolis which have since been losing its splendor and influence.
Only later in the nineteenth century with the implementation of the cork industry is that Silves gets a new breath and resumes his old lost proudly. Of its glorious past beyond its mighty buildings are the legends of Moorish kings and Christian princesses that are perpetuated in the children’s imagination. There’s one, I will tell by its charm and odor, once upon on time Ibne Almundim, king of Silves and poet, found among his prisoners of many battles a Nordic beauty, with golden hair and blue penetrating eyes named Gilda. Moved by her opaque fragility morning mesmerized by her strange beauty, the Moorish monarch decides to marry this woman who came from the Far North. After the denouement, she falls into a deep longing, sighing thru the corners of the palace, longing for the white landscapes of her homeland she never saw again. The king sends sensitive to her pain order the plantations of almond trees until the end of the kingdom. In the next spring, the queen, before a sea of white flowers retrieve her forces and the joy of living. Of this story the only legacy that still remains are the almond blossom and also the delicious sweets recipes that are a genuine ex-libris of Algarve cuisine.
