The home of the Official Dark Sky ® Alqueva Observatory
The village of Cumeada is a rural village in the municipality of Reguengos de Monsaraz, where the Official Dark Sky® Alqueva Observatory was born and where the Dark Sky® Association located the headquarters of the Dark Sky® Alqueva destination. This makes this village the centre of the development of a territory certified as a Starlight Tourist Destination, which extends over 10,000.00 km2 around the Great Alqueva Lake.
The Observatory and the headquarters were set up in a former primary school in Estado Novo and made it possible to recover a heritage that was in poor condition, and to define a new vocation for it, without losing its basic essence, the transmission of knowledge. This new vocation brings added value to the village, without changing its identity.
The village of Cumeada is, therefore, a perfect combination of the traditional and the new, where new perspectives meet tradition. Surrounded by nature and the Great Alqueva Lake, this village has another important natural resource, its night sky. It is not easy to find villages with such a low level of light pollution where it is possible to install an observatory that, without disturbing the daily life of the community, can maintain a level of sky darkness that allows night-time observation sessions and quality deep-sky astrophotography activities.
Thus, in addition to its natural resources, such as the landscape and the Alqueva lake, its main differentiating element is undoubtedly the protected night sky. Because of its quality and commitment to continuous improvement, this village is integrated and plays a fundamental role in the first Starlight Tourist Destination in the world, Dark Sky® Alqueva.
HIGHLIGHTS
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Dark Sky® Official Partner Network
Cumeada is the first rural AstroTurf village in Portugal and the first Starlight tourist destination in the world, where the official Dark Sky® Alqueva Observatory was created with the aim of creating a strategy that allows economic, environmental and social improvements. In the economic field, it promotes the sharing of experiences, the strengthening of skills and competitive advantages, increases tourism performance and contributes to the creation of new opportunities with the creation of new products. It also promotes continuous training actions in sustainability, business ethics, astro tourism and leads to new funding opportunities.
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Social Dark Sky
The social sphere Dark Sky® is a tool that promotes partnership and cooperation and a sense of community, and aims to bring people together for the protection of the night sky. It also includes training sessions, awareness-raising actions and other activities around its theme.
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Dark Sky® initiative to reduce plastics
Dark Sky® and the Global Tourism Plastics Initiative have joined forces to commit to a number of sustainable initiatives by 2025 including: eliminating plastic packaging; shifting from single-use to reusable models; creating a chain to have 100% of plastic packaging to be reusable or recyclable; and taking action to increase the amount of recycled content in all plastic packaging and items used.
