Arrábida

Arrábida Natural Park was created in 1976 south of Lisbon, between Setúbal and Sesimbra, and protects some 176 km² around the range of the same name, a limestone ridge that rises above the Atlantic and drops to the sea in cliffs.

Its botanical value is notable: the southern aspect of the slopes and the shelter of the range create a microclimate that allows a dense, well-conserved Mediterranean scrub, with holm oak, strawberry tree, mastic and dwarf fan palm, a formation that is exceptional on the Atlantic face of the peninsula. More than one thousand four hundred plant species have been catalogued, some confined to the massif.

The marine part, protected as the Professor Luiz Saldanha Marine Park since 1998, preserves rocky bottoms of great diversity, with communities of algae, sea fans and invertebrates, and is a route for bottlenose dolphins. The range also holds caves with prehistoric deposits, the sixteenth-century Arrábida convent set into the hillside and a tradition of Muscat wine on its northern slope. In 2025 UNESCO recognised Arrábida as a biosphere reserve, the most recent of Portugal's thirteen.