The Azores have been getting a good amount of attention lately, and if you're not familiar with them, you'll soon understand why.

With nine volcanic islands in the middle of the Atlantic, the Azores are closer to North America than any other part of Europe. There are crater lakes, hot springs, whales offshore, and hydrangeas blooming along the roads. Three new airlines began flying there this summer, bringing the total to sixteen carriers on more than thirty routes. Flying from Boston is about five hours nonstop.

Most of the attention focuses on one island, São Miguel, which accounts for about seven out of every ten overnight stays in the Azores.

Terceira is the second-most-inhabited island in the Azores. Azores Airlines flies there nonstop from Boston and offers seasonal nonstop service from New York, so reaching it does not require a connection through São Miguel. Its capital, Angra do Heroísmo, is the oldest city in the Azores and a UNESCO World Heritage site, noted as a port of call for the Africa and Indies fleets from the fifteenth century until the arrival of steamships.

Terceira is a farming island, mostly dairy. The interior is pasture divided by black stone walls. The coast is black rock, with pools where other places have sand. Everything is small and close and green.

The dish everyone tells you about is beef: alcatra, braised for hours in a clay pot with pepper, bay leaf, and wine. People stay in Angra, in converted farm estates, or in village guesthouses.

Drive ten minutes in any direction, and you will pass a chapel, a small one at the edge of a village or a larger one mid-block in the city. Most are brightly painted, with a crown or white dove on the roofline and wrought iron over three openings, a door and two windows for the three persons of the Trinity.

They are called impérios, and most of the year they are locked. Inside is an altar where a silver crown and scepter are displayed during the Holy Spirit festivities.

The first ones were wooden. A village put one up for the festival and took it down afterward. Permanent stone impérios began appearing in the second half of the nineteenth century, many of them paid for by Terceirans who had emigrated and sent money home, sometimes fulfilling promises made to the Holy Spirit before they left.

Leaving is one of the great stories of the Azores. Generations went to New England, California, Canada, and Brazil, driven by land scarcity, poverty, and, at times, conscription. Today, roughly a quarter of a million people live on the islands, and more than a million of Azorean descent live abroad.

The week the crown comes out

From after Easter through the summer, the impérios begin opening.

The crown comes out, processions move through the villages, and the community halls fill. Bread, meat, and wine are prepared and shared. The celebrations have been part of Azorean life for centuries, and on Terceira, with roughly seventy impérios, they stay visible all summer.

Families who left return, and others who have never lived on the island arrive because their parents or grandparents did.

Then February

Summer gets the most attention, but February is also worth the trip. Amateur groups spend months writing plays, building costumes, and rehearsing songs for danças and bailinhos, a popular theater form particular to Terceira, then travel from hall to hall over several days, performing comedy and satire for local audiences.

Terceira is usually sold as a three-day add-on to São Miguel, and the direct flights suggest the reverse.

The chapels are there either way. Whether they are open depends on when you come.