Strongly linked to the Ria and standing facing the Atlantic Ocean, Ílhavo gives priority to the relationship with water, largely due to its geographical, natural and landscape features that strongly influenced the writing of its history.

With a life documented about nine centuries, they passed through here brave people like the Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, to the legendary Portuguese navigators, who entered the mouth of the Vouga and its banks have developed their villages, offering the traditions and knowledge of ilhavenses, with a mix of people resulted in a mystical foundation of great maritime towns.

Old houses reflect the Alminhas and the past that interconnects the sea, mirroring themselves on the tiles in new art, which evokes the golden moments of emigration. Currently, the Municipal Library, guarded the “Palace of Alqueidão” of the seventeenth century, tells the memories, stories and legends of those times.

Looking devotion that men took to the sea and the wives and children pray for their return, the Church of Ilhavo or Gafanha da Nazaré, in the Church of Our Lady of Tears or the Chapel of Our Lady of the Navigators, peace was obtained and heard.

Never forgetting the figures and important and mythical elements of Ilhavo, statues immortalize your story in bronze or stone, so that the population proud to look and to present to anyone visiting Ilhavo.