Mina de São Domingos is a deserted mining village in the Alentejo, deep in the southeast of Portugal near the Spanish border. The Romans mined here for gold and silver for about four hundred years, and the British reopened the mines in the 19th century to extract copper pyrite, building a railway and an English-style village for the workers.
When the mines closed in 1966, the village was largely abandoned. Today it is an eerie, atmospheric place — the open pit with its acid-red lake, the English cemetery full of Cornish headstones, and the crumbling industrial buildings make for a striking landscape. A small mining museum in a restored worker's cottage tells the story of the people who lived here. The old loading quay at Pomarão, a few kilometres south, has become an unlikely riverside swimming spot at Praia do Peso in summer.
The mine was the first place in Portugal to have electric lighting — powered by its own generators long before the grid reached this remote corner of Alentejo.