Capelinhos Volcano

About this place

Capelinhos is a volcano on the far western tip of Faial Island in the Portuguese Azores, about 19 km in a straight line west of the town of Horta. Its eruption lasted 13 months, from September 1957 to October 1958, added about 2.4 square kilometres of new land to the island and left a landscape of grey-brown ash and crumbling cinder cliffs above the Atlantic. The eruption began in the sea just off the coast. A small island appeared and vanished again within weeks, and a second one grew until it joined Faial. Ash buried fields and houses in the parishes of Capelo and Praia do Norte, and many families emigrated to the United States and Canada, but no one died. It was the first undersea eruption documented from start to finish, and in 2022 the International Union of Geological Sciences listed it among the world's first 100 geological heritage sites. The old lighthouse, opened in 1903 and switched off when the eruption began, still stands half buried in ash, its lower floor now underground. Beside it, the Capelinhos Volcano Interpretation Centre, opened in 2008 and built largely underground, explains the eruption and the volcanoes of the Azores, and visitors can climb the lighthouse tower. Paths cross the ash slopes and run along the cliffs, where almost nothing grows even decades later. The ground is loose and the wind can be strong, so stay on marked paths and keep away from cliff edges. Walking the landscape is free; the centre is paid.