São Roque do Pico is a municipality in the northern part of the island of Pico, in the Portuguese archipelago of the Azores.
São Roque do Pico is a municipality in the northern part of the island of Pico, in the Portuguese archipelago of the Azores.
1. Walk the town
The main town on the north coast is São Roque do Pico, which actually consists of two distinct parts: São Roque itself and Cais do Pico, named after its long quay where most of the town’s life takes place. Boasting a very secure harbour with a long and massive jetty wall, Cais do Pico has become the island’s most important container transhipment harbour and the second most important fishing port after Madalena.
2. Museu da Indústria Baleeira
Within the harbour area is the island’s second whaling museum, the Museu da Industria Baleeira, located since 1994 in the old whale-processing factory where the old processing machines and boilers document how industrial whaling was carried out.
3. Convento de São Pedro de Alcântara
The former Franciscan Convento de São Pedro de Alcântara, still a notable sight despite the fact that this once magnificent building complex is slowly falling into ruins. To the convent belongs an adjacent church, which was built during the first quarter of the 18th century and houses an almost completely gilded main altar.
4. São Jorge
The island is characterized by a central backbone, stretching in form of a wide high plateau over 45 km across the island, averaging heights of about 800 m and culminating in the island’s highest peak, the Pico da Esperança (1053 m), which can more or less be considered the geological centre of the island. Featuring a row of volcanic peaks lined up one after another, this striking green plateau is a paradise for keen walkers who are rewarded with magnificent panoramic views across countless pastures, neatly separated by hedges of hydrangeas and tree-heather, down to idyllic fajãs (flat forelands at sea level) and coastal villages, as far as the surrounding islands of Pico, Faial and Graciosa.
5. São Miguel
Covering an area of approx. 747 sq. km, São Miguel is the largest and, with around 135,000 inhabitants – representing more than half of the archipelago’s total population – also the most populated island of the Azores. Its epithet being ‘the green island’ because of its extraordinary fertility, São Miguel is indisputably the economical, political and intellectual centre of the archipelago, with its capital Ponta Delgada representing the seat of the presidency of the Autonomous Region of the Azores and boasting the archipelago’s most important trading and fishing port as well as its only university and one of the three international airports.