Note: This is an AI-assisted English translation of the original Portuguese post published on 23 February 2016 at Ciência ao Natural. The original text was written by Luís Azevedo Rodrigues and is reproduced here for archival and educational purposes.
After several years of work, three bilingual books — in Portuguese and English — that I co-authored on the Urban Geology and Palaeontology of three Portuguese cities — Lagos, Tavira and Faro — are now published.
What is Urban Geology and Palaeontology?
Urban geology is a discipline that studies the geological materials used in the construction and ornamentation of cities — the stones of buildings, pavements, monuments and public spaces — and the geological and palaeontological information that these materials contain.
When you walk through a city, you are walking through a geological archive. The marble of a bank façade may contain the fossilised remains of organisms that lived hundreds of millions of years ago. The limestone of a pavement may preserve the traces of ancient sea floors. The granite of a public square tells a story of deep crustal processes and the cooling of magma kilometres below the Earth's surface.
Urban geology makes this hidden archive visible and accessible — it transforms the city into a classroom, a museum without walls, a place where the history of the Earth can be read in the stones beneath your feet and around you.
The Three Books
The three volumes cover the cities of Lagos, Tavira and Faro — three historic cities in the Algarve region of southern Portugal, each with a rich architectural heritage and a diverse geological substrate.
Each book is structured as a walking guide: a series of itineraries through the city, with detailed descriptions of the geological and palaeontological features visible in the buildings, pavements and public spaces along the route. The books are designed to be used in the field — compact, illustrated and accessible to a general audience, while also containing enough scientific detail to be useful to specialists.
The bilingual format — Portuguese and English — reflects the international character of the Algarve, a region that receives millions of visitors from across Europe and beyond each year. It also reflects a conviction that science communication should cross linguistic boundaries.
Why the Algarve?
The Algarve is a geologically fascinating region. Its rocks span an enormous range of ages and environments — from the ancient metamorphic and igneous rocks of the Hesperian Massif in the north to the Mesozoic carbonates of the central Algarve and the Cenozoic sediments of the coastal strip. The region's long history of human settlement — from the Phoenicians and Romans to the Moors and the Portuguese — has left a rich architectural legacy that draws on this geological diversity.
The cities of Lagos, Tavira and Faro are particularly rich in geological and palaeontological material. Their historic centres contain buildings constructed from a wide variety of local and imported stones, many of which are visibly fossiliferous. Walking through these cities with geological eyes is an experience that transforms the familiar into the extraordinary.
A Personal Note
This project has been one of the most rewarding of my professional life. It combines my passion for palaeontology and geology with my commitment to science communication — and it does so in a context that is deeply personal, rooted in the landscape and culture of the region where I live and work.
I hope that these books will help the residents and visitors of Lagos, Tavira and Faro to see their cities in a new light — to recognise the deep time that is embedded in the stones around them, and to feel the connection between the living city and the ancient Earth on which it stands.
Original post published on 23 February 2016 on the blog Ciência ao Natural.
Written by
Luís Azevedo Rodrigues
Palaeontologist & Science Communicator