Heritage
Cha das Caldeiras: Visitor and Heritage Guide
People live on the floor of an active volcano with an eight kilometer caldera. In 2014 it erupted, and they are still there.
- Country Cape Verde
- Category Heritage
- Reviewed 20 August 2026
- Sources 1
- Length 1 min read
Credit Zinneke, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Parc Naturel de Fogo is on Cape Verde's Tentative List, submitted in 2016. It is not inscribed. The figures below are from the country's own submission.
The park covers 8,468.5 hectares of the central part of Fogo, taking in the volcano, the crater, the Bordeira rampart and the Monte Velha forest, and it spans three municipalities: Santa Catarina holds half of it, Mosteiros twenty-eight percent and Sao Filipe twenty-two.
Visiting
- Altitude sickness is a risk on Fogo, where the summit is 2,829 meters.
- Seismic tremors are felt on Fogo, so check with your travel provider before traveling there.
- Sea travel to Fogo in particular can often be disrupted. Build in slack.
- The dengue civil protection warning level has been raised on Fogo among other islands.
- Go with a local guide. The caldera floor is a working settlement, not a viewpoint.
Sources
The park figures, the caldera dimensions and the altitude are from Cape Verde's Tentative List submission, entry 6100, submitted in 2016, written in French and paraphrased here, and read on 20 August 2026.