Photo: Matthias Süßen (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Silves was the capital of the Moorish Algarve — a city of poets, a double-walled fortress, and a river port trading with North Africa. Today it is a quiet town of 11,000 people dominated by Portugal's largest and best-preserved Moorish castle, built from the red Permian sandstone that colours every surface. This tour walks you from the castle ramparts through the old medina quarter to the riverside bridge, covering the Crusader sieges, the Reconquista cathedral, and the archaeological layers that reveal Xelb beneath Silves.
8 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Download on wi-fi before you set off — keep the screen open while it saves — then add it to your home screen so you can find it again. It works in airplane mode, with no roaming charges. Show me how to save it →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Direção-Geral do Património Cultural · Portuguese national heritage authority.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
The largest Moorish castle in Portugal — red sandstone walls, eleven towers, and an underground cistern
The Gothic cathedral, the archaeology museum, and the ghost of the great mosque beneath
The medieval bridge, the wayside cross, and the river that once made Silves a port
Eleven red sandstone towers and the largest Moorish fortress in Portugal — the castle that fell to Crusaders in 1189
A vaulted underground hall beneath the castle — the water supply that decided sieges
A fortress-cathedral in red sandstone, built over the great mosque after the Reconquista
Built around an Almohad well with its original spiral staircase — the layers of Xelb revealed
A double-sided medieval wayside cross — Crucifixion on one face, Pietà on the other
The bridge at the head of navigation that made Moorish Silves a port city
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 8 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration — history, architecture, and stories brought to life. 8 narration points across the full tour.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every significant point across the castle, old town, and riverside. The castle and cistern get deep dives; smaller sites get focused stories.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~1.5 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 8 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.
GPS-triggered audio tours for heritage sites worldwide.