Portugal’s Castlemania
08.11.21 A flaneur explains the nation in four castles.
It’s impossible to imagine Portugal without castles. They stand at the heart of its history. From the Iron Age on, fortified settlements have been built on the land’s rugged mountain tops. Celts, Phoenicians, Romans, Visigoths, Moors, Portuguese: each built their security around castles, and each in turn were ultimately supplanted by the next rising power, which built-back-better. At least until our modern age. Castles today are nothing but a tour-bus stop, a photo op accompanied by a pre-recorded audio guide.
Flanuers do not usually traffic in the baggage of history; they don’t get bogged down by dates of battles nor the genealogies of kings. But today, for your sake, my dear readers, I offer cliff notes to four of the nation’s most famous castles which we have visited in the past three weeks. These have helped me to better grasp Portugal’s soul.
- São Jorge Castle
Any Portuguese schoolchild will tell you the most significant event in history is the 1147 Siege of Lisbon, in which Afonso Henriques wrested this castle from Moorish control. From there, the Portuguese defended the city in their long drive to reclaim their territory from the North African invaders. This episode reveals the main weakness of castles: When you lose possession, your enemies gain all the advantages you built. And the Moors were masterful castle-makers. Literally, Moorish castles were the foundation on which the Portuguese secrured their territory from land-hungry Spaniards for most of the next 800-odd years.
São Jorge Castle became the fortified heart of the Kingdom of Portugal in 1255, with Lisboa as the capital. Around 1300, King Dinis I, renovated the castle and turned it into the Royal Palace of the Alcáçova. “Al” means “the” in Arabic, and Alcáçova simply means “the castle,” in the language of the defeated. Pretty much wherever you hear the prefix al-, it reveals the persistent influence of the Moors in modern Portugal, which has indelible shaped the nation’s character— Alfama (Lisbon’s old city), alho (garlic), alface (lettuce), aldeia (village).
The influence of the Moors in Iberia spread all across Europe, as reflected in obvious words like algebra, alcohol, alkaline, and countless others. Though the explusion of the “the invaders” is remembered in Spain and Portugal as a great victory for Christendom, the Moors had an advanced civilization in the Middle Ages, and brought to Europe many blessings, such as Arabic numerals (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, 10)which replaced the clumsy Roman numeral system Europeans had inherited (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X) (Here’s a great article on what we owe the Moors). They also introduced the compass to Europe — a tool Portugal would later use to discover the world.
In the XXIst century, there’s not much left to see but the walls of São Jorge’s. But the views over Lisbon are spectacular. There’s a small museum, and an ongoing archeological dig of an Iron Age site within the castle. Most unexpectedly, several peacocks live in the castle gardens, strutting about with admirable nonchalance and the occasional screech.
2. Marvão Castle
Far to the east of Lisbon, near the Portuguese border with Spain, the formidible fortress of Marvão dominates a steep mountaintop. Its dark granite walls look indominable. It’s impossible to even imagine assaulting this castle. All along the thick walls are protective shelters for archers, who could pick off approaching enemy soliders. The outer walls protect an entire medieval village, and a massive cistern collects enough rainwater to endure a seige.
The Moorish rebel chieftain, Ibn Marwan, built this castle in the eighth century, likely on Roman ruins, and gave his name to both the fortress and the town. Unwilling to bow to the Umayyad Emirate of Cordova, Marvan established, and for fifty years maintained, an independent realm with Marvao at its center. Evenutally, Marvao was swept up in local power struggles, and ulimately the centuries-long battle against Christian Crusaders. From the Moors’ perspective, this was an existential struggle, a downward spiral from peace and prosperity into a time of endless wars, the coarsening and militarization of their once-refined culture. Ultmately they were driven from the land they had called home for more than five hundred years.
Marvao changed hands more than once through these wars until it became a Portuguese stronghold against the very people who built it. When the Moors eventually fled at the close of the 11th century, the castle took on a new strategic role: as a bulwark against various Spanish kingdoms further east. The stronghold held fast against repeated attacks, and thus played a key role in maintaining young Portugal’s independence against a now-united Spainish nation all too eager to devour it.
Today, Marvao’s thick stone walls are open to invading armies of tourists. We were part of this assualt in late October, when the weather turned cold and wet, and the castle seemed right out of Scotland.
One of my favorite moments was the hike we took from Marvao castle down to the valley on an old road paved with stones hundreds of years ago. The effort to haul so much rock up to the castle and tamp each one into the dirt astounded me.
3. Torre de São Vicente
The Tower of Saint Vincent, also known as Belém Tower, is a four-storey, 16th century castle on the banks of the Tagus River near Lisbon. Together with a similar fortress on the far bank, its cannons defended the city from potential sea attack. It was also the point of departure and return for Portuguese explorers at the height of the Portuguese empire.
Portuguese explorers, please remember, got the jump on other European nations in discovering and conquering the world. This was not only due to the compass, that gift of the Moors. Early Portuguese explorers also discovered the trade winds that made long distance sea travel possible: Ferdinand Magellan (the Pacific route to the Spice Islands), Diogo Cão (southwest Africa and the Congo River), Bartholomew Dias (Cape of Good Hope and the route to Asia), Vasco da Gama (India), Pedro Cabral (Brazil) and a host of others. The Portuguese even claim Christopher Columbus as their native son! He was born here in the very heart of Portugal, in Alentejo, some historians claim, and his parents were Portuguese…the whole story about him being the child of Italian aristocrats was just a lie to bolster his resume, because he was actually the illegitimate son of a Portuguese duke! Of course, this has not yet been proven decisively.
With this exploding global trade, and the gold mined or looted from round the world, Portugal rapidly rose from a tiny young nation to a rich and powerful global empire — Europe’s first. One afternoon we took a sailing cruise from Belem, passing the tower by sea; our Portuguese captain told us that Henry the Navigator used to stand on the tower and watch for the ships to come back into Lisbon, bringing with them the wealth of the world (I’ve not been able to substantiate this story…). King Manuel the First commissioned the building of the nearby St. Jerónimos Monastery, assigning the monks the job of praying for the souls of the expeditions’ sailors at sea, and taking care of them when they reached home. Dias and Da Gama are both interred in the monastery’s catherdral.
4. The Pena Palace
A giant red turret is visible high in the hills of Sintra, a suburb of Lisbon. It’s just the tip of an extravangant palace built by one of the last kings of Portugal. An exuberant mishmash of Neo-Gothic, Neo-Manueline, Neo-Islamic and Neo-Renaissance architectural styles, it was constructed in the mid-19th century at the direction of King Ferdinand II as a summer residence on the site of an abandoned monastery. Just over the hill stand the ruins of an old Moorish fortress, which the king also restored, while also creating huge elaborate gardens round the palace.
This project took place during a century of turmoil in Portugal: conquest by Napoleon; the monarchy fleeing to Brazil; the British forcing Portugal to surrender large swathes of territory in Africa; a civil war; and economic decline through it all…So what were the people to make of this extravagant palace playground the royals built for themselves?
Just look at the stunning Azulejos from the palace walls:
The royal chambers of the Pena Palace are sumptuous and stunning. The study walls of the second-last king, Carlos II, are decorated with fanciful nymphs and fauns cavorting which he hand painted himself. Visitors remark how the rooms have been preserved as if the royal family had just up and left. And indeed, that is what happened….Sort of.
Carlos II and the young crown prince were assassinated in 1908. Shot dead in the royal carriage. Two years later a military coup deposed the final king, and sent the royal family into exile. Portugal became a Republic in 1910, and the Pena Palace is now a national treasure, and a leading attraction not just for foreign tourists. Each weekend the Portuguese flock to the castle by the tens of thousands. It’s everybody’s playground now.
And there you have it. The history of Portugal in four castles. You are welcome. I spent today writing this while looking out my window in Sintra, with Pena’s red tower in the distance. You will notice in the photo at left, I am still in my pajamas at sunset. Regular flanuering programming will resume tomorrow.
