Calmos

A Door of house 6.

Calmos – Caldeira do Mosteiro, or simply Caldeira, is a village in the parish of Mosteiro, in the Lajes das Flores municipality of the island of Flores, Azores, Portugal. It is composed of about 10 houses and a few barns. Caldeira is located inside a volcanic crater known locally by the same name, Caldeira (the Portuguese for “crater” is “caldeira”, akin to the Spanish word “caldera”, used in English for collapse volcanic craters). More precisely, Caldeira is located on the outer rim of the crater, in the “baixio” (i.e., in the lower part of the formation, forming a small valley) that cuts through the crater rim to allow the Caldeira stream, strengthened by two other streams that flow through the houses of Caldeira, exitsinto the sea, which it reaches after going through a succession of small cascades and after passing through the small “fajã” of Lagoarda (a “fajã” is a flat surface resulting from collapsing cliffs or lava flows, usually by the sea).

A view of houses 7, 8, and 11 with the stream and plane trees in the middle.

Caldeira was deserted in 1992, when its last inhabitant left it. The abandonment of the village was due in part to the strong emigration of Florentines to the USA, and, apparently, also to the fact that electrical power was still not available in the village at that time. Since then the village decayed, so that today most of its building are in ruins.

To visit Caldeira is to enter a magical place, where each