Megalithic Tour

Dolmens, mehnirs and cromlechs, erected between the forth and third millennium before Christ are testimonies of a vast movement of a social and magical-religious nature known as Megalithism.The Megalithism includes the communal burial chambers, also called dolmens and the non-funerary monuments – the standing stones or menhirs.While the dolmens comprise a chamber, a tumulus and a corridor, always facing east, the menhirs are blocks of stone, with round or oval section, of large dimensions and set vertically in the soil, isolated or grouped and forming enclosures. In Portugal it is possible to observe a considerable concentration in the Alentejo region, and especially between Montemor-o-Novo and Reguengos de Monsaraz. In Montemor-o-Novo council area are identified around three hundred megalithic monuments, most of them dolmens. The most significant monuments were excavated in the early first half of the twentieth century and some of the grave goods are in the National Museum of Archaeology, in Lisbon, and in the Montemor-o-Novo’s Archaeologic Museum.

The megalithic tour invites you to discover 12 of these magic monuments.