Photos

The castle of Palmela is risen in the rising abutment of the mountain range of the Arrábida and it if the Sintra sights an extensive area of Sines. Of difficult access, he was possibly only busy at times of bigger military instability. Previous references to its conquest for D. Afonso are not known Enriques (1148), that it will have strengthened the Arab blockhouse and later donated freires of the Order of Sant'Iago that in 1191 had removed before the almoada onslaught. Destroyed, it was recouped in 1205 by D. Sancho I who confirmed the donation to the Order of Sant'Iago that he installs there, from 1210, the chapter of the Order. In 1384, D. Nuno Álvares Pear tree communicates from Palmela, by means of great fogos, its proximity (after having looser the king of Castile in the battle of the Bogs) to the Master of Avis, surrounded for the Castilians in Lisbon. Later, king D. João I will order to proceed the workmanships from restores in the castle, mainly in the house arrest under bail tower. In 1423, the same king, orders to construct the convent that from 1443, will definitively receive freires of the Order of Sant'Iago. In 1689, D. Pedro II orders to construct to the abaluartadas walls and revelins, preparing the old castle to receive the modern defensive weapons, the cannons. In 1755, terramoto damaged the castle where, although everything, had continued to live freires of Sant'Iago up to 1834, it dates where the religious orders in Portugal had been extinct. After this date the castle will know a period of relative abandonment, was not the workmanships of restores initiated in 1945 for the State and retaken in the Sixties with intention to recoup the old convent and to install the current one there settled, one of most beautiful of Portugal.