The Promontory of Sagres, which includes the fort, is already a classified monument but now has been selected, along with the Mértola Village Museum, to be put forward for consideration as a European Heritage site.
These sites are approved if they define and epitomise European values and civilisation as a celebration of European integration, ideals, values and history.
Sites are carefully selected for their symbolic value, the role they have played in the European history and the activities they offer in order to bring the European Union and its citizens closer together.
The Promontory of Sagres, or Sagres Point, has been put forward by the Regional Directorate of Culture of the Algarve which is responsible for the site.
The application outlines the European significance of the site and details future information and educational activities especially aimed at children and young people.
Other goals are to raise the visibility and attractiveness of the Sagres site, in particular using digital media, and organising artistic and cultural activities.
The application states that the idea is to ‘reflect the uniqueness of this national monument, due to its geographical importance and historical context within the subject of the Portuguese Discoveries,' and to boost tourism at the site.
The proposal goes hand in hand with the completion of the rehabilitation and improvement of the site and is part of a wider programme to at last offer tourists a coherent explanation of Portugal's period of discoveries which are centred at the School of Navigation developed by Prince Henry the Navigator in the 15th century.
This school is believed to have been situated on the headland within the walls of the forteleza which were rebuilt after the 1755 earthquake.
The only building still surviving from Henry's day is the church within the fortress.
The school of navigation drew the best brains in Europe concerned with nautical sciences. Under Henry's patronage, a community of scholars came here to teach, study and correlate nautical knowledge brought back by captains of successive voyages to hitherto unknown places.
Comments
A substantial part of the well known Portuguese malignancy comes from today's Portuguese still learning from the 'skew - distortion' and 'emphasis' that Salazar's historians put into this countries history.
So growing up thinking that the Portuguese were some sort of 'white master race'. With centuries of off-white Arab influence airbrushed out - only now being re-discovered following their cousins the Spanish doing so first.
With claims of discovering 'Africa' and the 'Middle East' - yet for example Hereford Cathedrals Mapa Mundi clearly showing it 'mapped' two centuries before the Portuguese Discoveries.
Teaching hostility to northern Europe.
And airbrushing out the contribution of the British over earlier centuries in keeping Portugal in existence. And its coastline accessible. And safeguarding Brazil.
Yet then digging out and emphasising minor 'hiccups' in UK trading and exploration policy. Like re-arranging Faro and this promontory. Pink Maps and Ultimatums.
If there was a gathering of wise geographers, it was probably at Lagos, since the dwelling built by Henry at Sagres was not completed until the year before he died in 1460. But the whole story is most likely a myth.
And the only near contemporary record we possess of the house he built at Sagres is a design made by a sailor in Drake´s fleet which despoiled the site in 1587.
The idea of a school of navigation at Sagres is Salazarist propaganda.