Lajes do Pico on foot: the 1460 chapel, the fort, the whalers' staircase and the Maré pool

Most people come to Lajes do Pico for a whale-watching boat or the Museu dos Baleeiros, then drive off again. The town itself takes a morning to walk, and the municipality has done the planning: its Rota da Cultura Baleeira, the whaling culture route, lists 14 stops around town, each with its own page on rcb.cm-lajesdopico.pt. This guide groups them by story, from the first settlers to the whalers, and says what you can and cannot get into.

Lajes stands on a fajã, a low platform of basalt that lava flows from the south-west flanks of the Topo volcano pushed out into the sea. According to the Azores environment service, it is the largest coastal platform in the archipelago. It is also the oldest town on Pico. The first settler, Fernão Álvares Evangelho, is thought to have come ashore here in the 15th century.

Start with the oldest church. The Ermida de São Pedro was built by the first settlers in 1460, which makes it the first church on Pico. It is dedicated to St Peter in honour of the island's first parish priest, Friar Pedro Gigante, who is credited with bringing the Verdelho grape to Pico. The chapel is small and whitewashed, with a little belfry on the left and a square tidal well on its right. It is listed as a Building of Public Interest. No visiting hours are published, so expect it to be locked outside services.

In the Largo de São Pedro nearby is the Padrão Henriquino, a monument put up in 1960 for the 500th anniversary of the settlement of Pico (1460 to 1960) and of the death of Prince Henry the Navigator. It marks the area of Penedo Negro, where the first settler landed.

Two smaller stops belong to the same story. The Ribeira de Fernão Álvares is the stream about a kilometre from the landing place where the settler found water and built the first house on the island. A municipal order of 1502 fined anyone caught washing in it, between the bridge and the road to Almagreira, 200 réis. The old public wash house still has its octagonal tidal well, inscribed "CM1942", which fed a channel to ten sinks. The water was brackish, good enough for cooking and washing.

The Forte de Santa Catarina is the only military building on Pico. It went up in 1792 as a precaution against Napoleon's armies, and once that threat passed, a lime kiln was built on the site in 1885. The municipality restored it and reopened it on 26 August 2006. Today it is a garden with a viewpoint, an open-air amphitheatre and public toilets, which makes it a good place to stop for a while.

The Convento de São Francisco, with the church of Nossa Senhora da Conceição attached, is the oldest convent on Pico. It was founded in 1641, finished in 1700 and enlarged between 1768 and 1804. A fire destroyed the church in 1830, and it was restored more plainly afterwards. Look for the square three-storey bell tower and the stone frame around the main door. The convent building now houses the town hall, the police station, the tax office and the local paper, O Dever, so it is a working building rather than a museum.

The whaling story starts on a flight of steps. When the lookout at the Vigia da Queimada spotted a whale, he set off a rocket. Whalers from Ribeira do Meio, Silveira and the rest of the area dropped what they were doing and ran down to the boats. The steps are now called the Escadaria dos Baleeiros, the whalers' staircase.

At the bottom are the Casas dos Botes da Lagoa, three two-storey boat houses from the late 19th century. They belonged to three whaling companies, Liberdade Lajense, Estrela Lajense and Venturosa Lajense, and each has wide doors and a ramp down to the water for launching the boats. The local nautical club, the Clube Náutico das Lajes do Pico, uses them now.

In spring 2025 the municipality opened the Sala do Bote, an exhibition on the Azorean whaleboat, in the Casa dos Botes building on the seafront at the entrance to town. It covers how the boats were built and how they changed, and uses virtual reality. No hours or prices have been published, so ask at the tourism office.

On the shore where sperm whales were cut up until the 1950s stands the Monumento aos Baleeiros by the artist Pedro Cabrita Reis. It is a large marble-clad doorway with a gap at its base, open towards the sea. Both sides carry the names of the whalers, the whaling companies, the boatbuilders and the boats registered from 1954 onwards.

Beside it is a traiol, or trywork: a ramp, a stone cutting platform and the open-air pots where blubber was melted into oil over a wood fire. This is how whale oil was made in Lajes until the 1950s, before the factories.

The Vigia da Queimada was built in 1939 for the Lajes whaling companies and closed in 1984, when whaling was banned. Since 1991 it has belonged to the whale-watching company Espaço Talassa, and it is still in use, with lookouts searching the sea for the boats. It is the only two-storey vigia in the Azores. A neighbour's trees and maize blocked the view from the first floor, so a second storey was added. From the top the watchers cover nearly 50 nautical miles from east to west.

Our whale-watching guide to Lajes explains how the vigias work with the boats today.

Finish at the southern tip of the town. The Maré bathing area is a natural rock pool with concrete access, plus open-sea swimming over a basalt shelf. Its official profile gives an average water temperature of 21 °C in the bathing season, which in 2024 ran from 1 June to 30 September, and rated the water excellent every year from 2015 to 2023. The sea reaches it easily, so on a rough day just look. Across the water you can see the mountain and the Castelete, the eroded chimney of an old underwater volcanic cone.

The same corner is a protected habitat area and, according to the municipality, the best place on Pico for waders, with herons, gulls and terns as well. The sharp reeds make parts of it hard going. Elsewhere on the platform, a windmill built in the 1920s by Domingos de Simas Belém, who had come back from the United States, collapsed in a gale about 30 years later and killed him. The Azores government restored it in 2020 and 2021 as a bird hide.

The municipality lists the Museu dos Baleeiros on Rua dos Baleeiros as open Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00 to 17:30 from April to September and 09:30 to 17:00 from October to March, closed on Mondays. Our rainy-day guide describes the visit. The Centro de Artes e de Ciências do Mar, in the old SIBIL whale factory that worked from 1955 to the early 1980s, was listed as temporarily closed when we checked in October 2026.

The tourism office, opened in 2019 on the museum square, sells local crafts and books and has toilets. Its listed hours are Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 17:00, closed at weekends and on holidays. Phone +351 292 672 486 to check the museum and the Sala do Bote before you go.

A Monday is the worst day for this walk, because the museum is shut, and a weekend means no tourism office. If you are on Pico in late August, the Semana dos Baleeiros puts the old whaleboats back on the water; in 2026 it ran from 24 to 30 August.

How long does the Lajes do Pico town walk take? Allow a morning, and more if you go into the Museu dos Baleeiros, which is closed on Mondays.

Is there an official route? Yes. The municipality's Rota da Cultura Baleeira lists 14 stops with a page for each at rcb.cm-lajesdopico.pt. The pages describe the stops but give no distances between them.

Can you swim in Lajes do Pico? Yes, at the Maré bathing area at the southern end of town, a rock pool with open-sea swimming beside it. The 2024 season ran from June to September, and its water was rated excellent every year from 2015 to 2023.

What is the oldest church on Pico? The Ermida de São Pedro in Lajes, built by the first settlers in 1460. It is small and usually locked outside services.