Travel – Portugal – Almourol and Tomar

This is an excerpt from my book Travels through History : Portugal currently on sale at a discount.

Almourol is one of the best known and most interesting castles to visit in Portugal because it stands on a small rocky island in the middle of the Tagus River. Visitors can only get there by boat. The Moors built the first castle on the island, calling it Almorolan (“high rock” in Arabic). In 1129, the 17-year-old Dom Afonso Henriques, the first King of Portugal, captured it. The castle guarded a strategic river crossing. The king gave the Portuguese branch of the Knights Templar the castle as they controlled north-central Portugal from the Mondego River to the Tagus. 

In 1160 Gualdim Pais, Master of the Order of the Temple, expanded the Moorish fort. Over the next 11 years the Castle of Almourol took the basic form seen today, dominated by the Torre de Menagem. The Templars held the castle until 1311, when their influence waned because of the arrests of the Templar leadership in France four years earlier. 

The Vox Clamantis bull of Pope Clement V in 1312 abolished The Templars and handed over their assets to The Knight’s Hospitallers across all Christian territories. King Dinis did not accept this. Although he annexed all Templar assets, he negotiated with The Holy See to create a new religious militia. The King claimed the need to defend Portugal from the Moors, whose territory bordered on Portugal by land in Andalusia and by sea in North Africa. After four years of negotiation, the Pope gave permission to found the new military religious order. 

On March 19th 1319, Pope John XXII´s bull, the Ordo Militae Jesu Christi, or Military Order of Our Lord Jesus Christ, created the new order. King Dinis incorporated the Knights Templar and their assets into the Order of Christ. 

Even the papal bull couldn’t prevent Almourol from falling into ruin. The authorities restored the castle only when it became the property of the state from 1910 onwards. Archaeologists found Roman coins and many medieval relics on the island. However, no one has found any evidence of the fabled treasure of the Templars. They removed this treasure from Paris just before the arrest of The Templar leadership on the orders of the King of France, Philip the Fair. 

The fortification is 18 metres in height, 310 metres long, and 75 metres wide. The castle has an oblong plan comprising two enclosures. An exterior lower wall faces upstream with a gate. There are nine towers to reinforce the walls. The inner enclosure is at a higher elevation because of the unevenness of the terrain. The walls are accessible near the gate to the main keep, three stories tall. 

Visitors can scramble over the walls and climb up the steps to see the lovely views along the river. Safety features are being introduced such as handrails, though there’s nothing to stop you from walking off the battlements and falling into the inner courtyard. Be careful when taking pictures.

There are some legends surrounding Almourol. Early in the 12th century, the lord of Almorolan was an Arab emir named Almorolon. The emir’s beautiful daughter fell in love with a Christian knight. She sneaked him into the castle every night. The knight was using the girl, and one night opened the gate to his fellow knights, who captured the castle. Almorolon and his heartbroken daughter embraced and threw themselves from the parapets into the river below.

  In 1160, Gualdim Pais also started a convent-fortress in Tomar that became the Portuguese headquarters for the Templars. They only completed the convent in the 17th Century, and it has a variety of architectural styles. They built the fortress within an outer belt of walls. In the interior, two curtain walls divided the area into three different spaces. The southern part is now the orange grove. The base for the knights was in the northern part. To the west was the Master’s house – the Alcáçova with its tower – and to the east was the knights’ oratory – the Charola.