Impérios do Espírito Santo

The Holy Spirit cult reached the Azores with the first settlers in the fifteenth century and survived there after fading in mainland Portugal. Its focus is a silver crown, which is kept in an império - a small chapel, usually one room, painted in strong colours with a balustraded front and a date, of which Terceira alone has around seventy, one for each brotherhood. Each year a household takes the crown into its home for a week, and the festivals that follow around Pentecost involve crowning a person, often a child, and then feeding everyone: the bodo, a distribution of bread, meat and wine to the whole community, free and to anyone who comes, funded by the brotherhood. It is a genuinely redistributive institution that has run for five centuries, and it travelled with Azorean emigrants to California, Massachusetts and Hawaii, where the festivals continue.

What you actually see

• The impérios - around seventy small painted chapels on Terceira alone.
• The crown - a silver crown kept in the chapel and taken into households in turn.
• The bodo - a free distribution of bread, meat and wine to the whole community.
• The diaspora - the same festivals running in California, New England and Hawaii.

When to go

Around Pentecost and the following weeks, roughly May to July. The chapels can be seen year-round; the festivals are on local dates that vary by parish.

Honest expectations

Festival dates differ from village to village and are not published for visitors - ask locally. The chapels are usually locked outside their week. This is a religious and social institution, not a display; visitors are welcomed at the bodo but should behave as guests.

Nearby

Angra do Heroísmo is the island's main town; Serra do Cume and Biscoitos are elsewhere on Terceira.