Terceira

Bull hooves have clattered on these village cobbles for centuries — the tourada à corda, Terceira's rope-held bull tradition, the animal never harmed and the street its stage, watched from walls and raised ground. Underground, the same volcanic forces that built the island have hollowed it — lava tunnels run for hundreds of metres beneath the pastures.

The capital, Angra do Heroísmo, is UNESCO-listed and the oldest continuously settled city of the Azores, its Renaissance grid laid down in the fifteenth century as a planned harbour town for the treasure fleets — Monte Brasil's fortified volcanic peninsula still guards the bay. The tourada à corda is the island's signature tradition: the bull always on its rope, never killed, the street given over and watched from raised ground — village identity first, spectacle second. Below ground, the Algar do Carvão descends a volcanic chimney into a cathedral-sized cavern with silica stalactites and a clear lake at the bottom, and the Gruta do Natal lava tube runs over seven hundred metres beneath the pastures. Alcatra, the island's slow-braised beef in clay, closes the day the way tradition intends.