Santa Cruz is the capital and main town on the Graciosa island, lying on a small plain hemmed in by rounded green hills. It was founded in the 15th century by Pedro Correia da Cunha who became the island’s first governor. Chateaubriand, the French diplomat and author, stayed here in 1791 en route for America, later praising Graciosa’s bucolic charms in his Memoires d’Outre-Tombe.
Santa Cruz today has several attractive old houses, mostly dating from the 18th century, many with the delicately wrought lattice-work balconies that are characteristic of Azores domestic architecture of this period. The 16th-century Igreja Matriz dedicated to Sao Francisco, is Graciosa’s most notable construction long with the nearby Ingreja da Misericodia, and there are three simple chapels just above town on the little hill called Monte d’Ajuda, including the 17th-century Capela de Nossa Senhora d’Ajuda.
At the summit of this hillock (420 ft) you can look down on Santa Cruz and wonder at the neatness of its layout, like a child’s painting of Toy Town with its orderly streets of white-washed houses, red-tiled roofs and tall trees surrounding a village pond. Just south of town is the Baia da Barra, where fields have been divided and sub-divided by walls and hedges to protect crops from the wind in a colourful geometric pattern like a modern work of art.
