This is not really news because this has been going on for some years now.
Why do we write about it then? Growing interest in the Alentejo will eventually push prices up in the housing market, and for you, interested in the Alentejo we thought this might be of interest.
On the 9th of august The Independent (co.uk) published an article in their homes and property section: ¨In search of the peaceful Portugal¨ This article is not only about the Alentejo region but all other rural areas.

Portugal Real Estate is at premium currently especially in the Alentejo region between Lisbon and the Algarve. Peace and quiet seekers worldwide discover this new tourism area.

Trendy magazines write about it in their holiday specials and also more and more articles are written about people who bought a second house in this area. Many of them consider Portugal as their second home.

And because we did not want to live a great distance from our children we decided Portugal would be the obvious choice as we both spoke Portuguese.

We had travelled through Portugal before and knew the area north of Lisbon however the warmer climate of the south met our needs a little better.

After we had travelled through the Algarve region which we found crowded and spoilt by tourism we finally visited the Alentejo region, specifically the south-west Alentejo.

Some describe the Alentejo as the new Tuscany. We found an article in Redhot, magazine of Virgin airlines, the following lines are just a part of that article: "As anyone who's visited Florence in high season will testify, Tuscany has become more than a tad overcrowded. Luckily for those who want to escape the tourists, there's no shortage of New Tuscany's.

They had built in Portugal and went through what seemed like a long drawn out process and this scared us a little so we chose to purchase an existing house rather than build as we didn't want to go through the nightmare of a long drawn out process.

Fate however had a different idea on what we would eventually purchase after we visited a beautiful piece of land without a single building on it, we had immediately fallen in love with it.

A television crew from the popular show "A Place In The Sun" has visited the Alentejo region of Portugal documenting the country and it's many attributes.

Local Realty firms are expecting a marked increase in the number of property sales as people are awakened to the inherent beauty of this EU partner when the show airs later this year.

While prices are still classed as at a premium in the Algarve regions there has been increased interest in the little known Alentejo region of Portugal.