Arraiolos
municipality of Portugal
Arraiolos (pronounced [ɐʁɐˈjɔluʃ] ), officially the Town of Arraiolos (Portuguese: Vila de Arraiolos), is a town seat of the Arraiolos Municipality in the Évora District of Portugal. As of 2021, the municipality had a population of 6,606 people and covered an area of 683.75 square kilometres (264.00 mi2). The town itself was home to 3,133 residents in the same year. The current Mayor is Silvia Pinto, elected by the Unitary Democratic Coalition.
The town is famous for its castle and its embroidered wool rugs and carpets. Arraiolos rugs have been made since at least the 16th century.
In October 2003, Jorge Sampaio, the then President of Portugal, invited the Presidents of Finland, Germany, as well as of soon-to-be EU members Hungary, Latvia and Poland to Arraiolos in order to discuss the consequences of the 2004 enlargement of the European Union and plans for a Constitution for Europe. Subsequent meetings of non-executive presidents of European Union member states have been dubbed Arraiolos meetings.
History
Origins and Roman era
Archaeological evidence suggests that the area around Arraiolos has been inhabited since at least the late Neolithic or Chalcolithic periods, indicating significant human occupation as early as the 4th millennium BCE. Historians believe that during protohistoric times, the site of the present-day Castle of Arraiolos served as a central habitat. Prehistoric objects were excavated from a tumulus in Arraiolos at the beginning of the twentieth century.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q699141. VIAF identifies the subject as 148935017. The Library of Congress control number is n81096134. Authority coordinates are 38.723, -7.984. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2021, 2003 and 2004.
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This entry incorporates text from “Arraiolos” 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.