Sagres Point Sagres Point Sagres Point ("", , from the Latin "Promontorium Sacrum" ‘Holy Promontory’) is a windswept shelf-like promontory located in the southwest Algarve region of southern Portugal. Only 4 km to the west and 3 km to the north lies Cape St. Vincent (), which is usually taken as the southwesternmost tip of Europe. The vicinity of Sagres Point and Cape St. Vincent has been used for religious purposes since Neolithic times, to which standing menhirs near Vila do Bispo, a few miles from both points, attest. The promontory of Sagres has always been important for sailors because it offers
Sagres Point westerly, but because it is further north, and Strabo's map of the Iberian Peninsula is rotated clockwise, bringing the Pyrenees into a north-south line, it could have been taken as further east. The most westerly point of the Iberian peninsula and of the European continent is Cabo da Roca, near Sintra; the southernmost, Punta de Tarifa, in Andalusia. Strabo reports (Book 3.1.4) as follows: No part of Cape St. Vincent fits this description, but on the eastern side of Sagres Point is a harbor, Baleeira, port of the modern town of Sagres, protected by four small islands in a line