Vila Franca do Campo
Information
Vila Franca do Campo is a lovely village situated on the wonderful São Miguel Island, Azores Archipelago, in fact the first capital of the Island, created in 1444. The importance of the village was nonetheless gone with violent earthquake of 1522, when half of the village got underneath the earth and thousands of people died.
The village has been able to maintain its traditional tranquillity along with a beautiful and interesting natural and architectonic heritage. Here one can sight and access the wonderful Vila Franca do Campo Islet, located at about 1km distance from the coast, on a lovely crater of an extinct volcano, classified as a Natural Reserve, and quite frequented during summer months.
Vila Franca do Campo is proud of its Mother Church of the 15th century, with a lovely gothic façade, and also of its Nossa Senhora da Paz Chapel, the lovely 18th century São Pedro Church or of the interesting Municipal Museum that approaches the rich anthropology and ethnology of the region.
Throughout the region nature shows off its excellence, surrounded by the typical greenish vegetation of the São Miguel Island (often named as the “green island”) and offering great natural landscapes, as in the Fogo, Congro or Nenúfares Lakes.
Quite appreciated are the famous Queijadas (a type of cheesecake), with origins on the Santo André Convent and still made after a recipe that has been secretly maintained by two families, and also the objects in clay and pottery, that also follow ancient techniques.
