World Heritage
Alto Douro Wine Region
Description
The Alto Douro Wine Region represents the landscape that characterises the vast Demarcated Region of the Douro, the oldest viticultural legal region in the world. The cultural landscape of the Alto Douro combines the monumental Nature of the Douro River valley, which has steep slopes, poor and uneven soils, with the ancestral and continuous action of the Humankind, adjusting the space to the agricultural necessities of Mediterranean type that the region bears. This intimate relation between the human activity and the Nature allowed the creation of an ecosystem of unique value. It is taken an exemplary profit of the soil characteristics, with the shaping of the landscape in ledges, preserving them of the erosion and allowing the vineyard cultivation.
This region produces the world famous Port Wine, which represents the main stimulating vector of the local technology, culture, traditions and economy. With the great human investment in this landscape of singular beauty it became possible the settling of populations since the distant Roman occupation. From this long tradition of viticulture it also resulted the living and developing reality, at the same time a past testimony and a future cause, solidly protected in the optimisation of the natural resources and in the preservation of the ambiences.