Roça do Casal do Meio

A stopover on a hike at the Risco Cliffs.

Easily recognizable is the Casa de Calhariz. The property was once crown land, a residence of the Dukes of Palmela, and now serves as a 3-star event venue with holiday apartments. In the ”Round House,” there's also a permanent exhibition showcasing the settlement and use of the area since ancient times — including menhirs and models of old villages. Unless a management consultancy is misusing the space with PowerPoint, you can enter.

On the vast property lies the dolmen of two men from the Bronze Age. It’s much easier to find the regional cultural heritage from the outside now that a sign has been placed in front of it. You can see a stone circle with a diameter of about eleven meters — the outline and remnants of the artificial dome of a tumulus. The chamber underneath is three meters high, covered in clay, and supported by massive stone blocks. You can (usually not) enter through a four and a half meter long passage. The most famous researcher of the site is Konrad Spindler, to whom we owe details about the history of the glacier mummy Ötzi — and a study on the local tholos tomb from 1974.

Buried are two men, one in a supine position and one in a lateral crouched position. Architectural similarities can be found in Mycenae and Sardinia, which could be interpreted as an early version of globalization.

 

 

Further facts: the tumulus was built in the late Bronze Age from the limestone of the region, around 1000 years before our era. For Sesimbra, the monument is significant because it’s the first evidence of human settlement in the immediate municipal area. For science, Casal do Meio is considered a reference object for the chronological attribution of new finds from the late Bronze Age across Europe — a fibula found here even has its own classification.