The traces of the past are essential pieces to the knowledge of human life throughout the time. However, as far as monuments and sites are concerned, if they are not preserved and improved, they will become degraded when uncovered and open to the public.

The Archaeological Circuits in Alentejo and Algarve were created due to the need to both establish conditions to the tourist/cultural safeguard and animation of the archaeological sites, by researching, preserving, improving and making them known, create infrastructures to welcome the public and interpret the selected sites.

The Archaeological Circuits are the result of a specific programme developed by the ex-IPPAR in cooperation with the ex-Instituto de Apoio e Financiamento ao Turismo (Tourism Support and Funding Institute), and in articulation with the local municipalities and other public and private entities involved.

The option for the application of this Programme to the south of Portugal is due to the fact that a few heritage safeguard interventions have been made there lately, and also because Alentejo and Algarve, although possessing the adequate resources, need to be animated in order to improve the local economy and diversify the tourist offer.

The choice of the sites was made according to their monumental and historic characteristics, as well as their situation in areas of great landscape and patrimonial richness. Firstly, the choice fell on listed monuments under or in course of being under the IPPAR's care, and also on those which were already becoming popular and were often visited.

The general criteria followed for the process of mediation with the visitor are:

• To base the site presentation on its technical and scientific knowledge conveying the essential data on the site and its context, relating it to the surrounding area and also trying to provide a vision integrated with other patrimonial realities;
• Whenever possible, to focus the site presentation on a key theme that can make it specific within the patrimonial universe context;
• To make possible the communication of contents without affecting the monument's authenticity and the "spirit" of the sites through the adoption of a plan for intervention which stresses the history of the monument, thus trying to reach a suitable physical and visual interaction with some incidental new work;
• To introduce new modern values whenever new constructions are needed in the sites through appealing and innovative ways of presenting the contents, thus trying, on the one hand, to meet new demands of competence as to the visitors' reception and, on the other hand, to assume the presence of the values of the qualified architecture as a means to approximate the public to these monuments;
• To try to relate the neighbouring patrimonial resources, namely through proper diffusion material, going beyond a static concept of thematic circuits and channelling the visitors towards other more geographically articulated monuments;
• To do one's best to integrate the archaeological site, as a precious cultural resource for development, within its environment, its communities and its socio-cultural way of living, adapting key concepts to the realities and specifications of each site.

As far as the eleven sites who were initially integrated in the Programme and intervention targets in a more complete way are concerned, hundreds of interventions were made, framed in their safeguard and improvement Programmes:

• Acquisition actions and land expropriation having in mind to open to the public the necessary framing areas or even the monuments themselves;
• Research and study interventions supported by archaeological excavation works;
• Interventions aiming at the enclosure, cleaning, recovery and maintenance of the monuments;
• Development of projects aiming at the reclassification of itineraries, trying to "organise" the visit and solve some accessibility problems, namely the transposition of archaeological structures through walks, soil treatment issues, rain water drainage and vegetal covering;
• Development of contents projects for the site interpretation, to be applied in the Interpretation Centres;
• Production of a symbols and signs project to be applied to all the sites integrated in the Programmes, normalising the type and quality of the information to be given, the lettering and graphical elements, dimensions and materials;
• Making of diffusion materials (visiting guides in different languages with a brief explanation and interpretative graphic elements, itinerary guide books offering more detailed, in-depth data, a bilingual guide and CD-ROM common to all sites) and promotion materials with specific characteristics for each monument and archaeological site.