The 987-ha site on the vol­canic island of Pico, the sec­ond largest in the Azores arch­i­pel­ago, con­sists of a remark­able pat­tern of spaced-out, long lin­ear walls run­ning inland from, and par­al­lel to, the rocky shore. The walls were built to pro­tect the thou­sands of small, con­tigu­ous, rec­tan­gu­lar plots (cur­rais) from wind and sea­wa­ter. Evi­dence of this vini­cul­ture, whose ori­gins date back to the 15th cen­tu­ry, is man­i­fest in the extra­or­di­nary assem­bly of the fields, in hous­es and ear­ly 19th-cen­­tu­ry manor hous­es, in wine-cel­lars, church­es and ports. The extra­or­di­nar­i­ly beau­ti­ful man-made land­scape of the site is the best remain­ing area of a once much more wide­spread prac­tice.