Audioguides Cascais

Cascais was a fishing village on the Atlantic coast west of Lisbon until the royal family began summering in the Cidadela palace in 1870, and then the wealthy of Lisbon followed, and then the grand hotels arrived, and the fishermen found themselves sharing the harbor with pleasure boats. The Estoril Casino, a few kilometers east along the Linha road, opened in 1916 and during World War II became the largest operating casino in the world, a neutral meeting ground where British, German, and American intelligence agents rubbed shoulders over the baccarat tables. Ian Fleming visited in 1941 while working for British Naval Intelligence and used the experience as seed material for James Bond's Casino Royale -- the Palacio Hotel in Estoril is where he stayed.

The coastline around Cascais is the draw: the Boca do Inferno (Hell's Mouth), a natural rock arch where the Atlantic pounds the cliff in dramatic spouts of spray, is ten minutes on foot from the lighthouse.

The beaches of Guincho, 10 kilometers north, are wild dune beaches favored by kitesurfers and backed by the Serra de Sintra. The Cascais Municipal Museum in the Casa das Historias Paula Rego, a striking red-pyramidal building by Eduardo Souto de Moura, is one of the more architecturally interesting museums on the Portuguese coast.