Angra do Heroísmo
municipality in Portugal
Angra do Heroísmo, officially the Very Noble, Loyal and Ever Steadfast City of Angra do Heroísmo, or simply Angra, is a city and municipality on Terceira Island, Portugal, and one of the three capital cities of the Azores. Founded in 1478, Angra was historically the most important city in the Azores, as seat of the Bishop of the Azores, government entities, and having previously served as the capital city of Portugal during the Liberal Wars. The population in 2011 was 35,402, in an area of 239.00 km2. It was classified as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1983.
Name
Angra is the Portuguese word for "inlet", "cove", or "bay". The epithet do Heroísmo ("of Heroism", "the Heroic") was granted to the city by Maria II to commemorate its citizens' successful defense of the island against a Miguelist assault in 1829. The full name of the city is the Very Noble, Loyal and Ever Steadfast City of Angra do Heroísmo (Portuguese: Muito nobre, leal e sempre constante cidade de Angra do Heroísmo).
History
Some claim that Angra was founded by Álvaro Martins, who sailed with Didrik Pining on his expedition to the New World, and with Bartolomeu Dias on his voyage around the Cape of Good Hope. Others contend that Angra was founded in 1450 or 1451 by Jácome de Bruges, a Fleming in the service of Prince Henry the Navigator, who recruited farmers, fishermen, and merchants in the Low Countries to colonize the Azores.
The first references to the settlement of the Azores date to between 1439 and 1449, through the donation of Henry the Navigator the colonization of seven islands in the central and eastern groups of the archipelago.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Angra do Heroísmo” as municipality in Portugal. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as municipality in Portugal. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q193677. VIAF identifies the subject as 154798579. The Library of Congress control number is n82161464. Authority coordinates are 38.656, -27.215. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1478, 2011, 1983 and 1829.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Angra do Heroísmo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.