The Region

An open air live museum, with handicraft shops and local products, an excellent restaurant, virtual reality in the Science Centre, interactive activities for children and museum area illustrating the daily life of the former mines.

On Sundays, they sing. The former miners raise their voices, one by one, and fill the room of the ‘Restaurant Armazém Central’ with the warmth of the Alentejo soul.

As if time went back in the village, lost at the extreme south of the town of Grândola.

The village of Lousal, used to be the most important socio-economical centre of the area, when the mines – deactivated in 1988 – employed 3.000 workers.

Today it’s like scenery, with a door opened to the past, where in each corner you find the memory of a way of life which does not come back.

The future is being built everyday. Due to a rehabilitation programme, a centre of ‘live science’, a hotel, many handicraft centres, the mine museum, the market of local products and a restaurant were created.

Some of the employees are former miners or their relatives.

The village of Lousal is now 50 kms away from the coast, but at about 360 million years ago it was an ocean of powerful volcanoes, associated to hydrothermal activities. The modern mine exploitation started in 1900 and finished in 1988. In the 90’s, the owners ‘Sapec’ and the Municipality of Grândola, with the collaboration of Higher Education Institutions and the participation of inhabitants, created the ‘Foundation Frederic Velge’ with the aim of developing employment, stopping the decline of the community, preserving the memory and establishing a centre of knowledge and generate – very successfully.