Private Tour Tomar Almourol Castle - Templar route - From Lisbon

Tomar, a Templar City
Former seat of the Order of the Knights Templar, Tomar is a city of great charm for its artistic and cultural wealth, whose greatest expression is in the Convent of Christ, one of the chief works of the Portuguese Renaissance.

Originally designed as a monument symbolizing the Reconquest, the Convent of the Knights Templar of Tomar (transferred in 1344 to the Knights of the Order of Christ) came to symbolize just the opposite during the Manueline period – the opening up of Portugal to other civilizations.

In the middle of the River Tagus, the enigmatic Almourol Castle is one of the most emblematic monuments of the Christian reconquest.

Situated on an island in the middle of the River Tagus, Almourol is one of the most distinctive castles in Portugal, because of its historical significance and surrounding landscape.

Its history reminds us of the Reconquest of the Portuguese territory during the Middle Ages. When the Christians arrived here in 1129, the castle already existed under the name of Almorolan, having been incorporated immediately afterwards into the land that was placed under the protection of the Knights Templar, whose Master at that time was Gualdim Pais. According to an inscription at the entrance to the castle, its reconstruction work began in 1171.

Tomar is born from the donation by King Afonso Henriques in 1159 of the Ceras Castle to the Knights Templar. The territory was crossed in the south by the Tomar river - with its fertile valley to the west with very step foothills. It was in one of those foothills that Master D. Gualdim Pais, founded, in 1160, the Tomar castle and village.
The castle was built on a belt of walls surrounding the edifice. Within it, two curtains of walls divided the area into three different spaces. In the southern part of the fortress one could find the villa space - today is where the orange grove sits. On the highest part of the foothill, to the north, the Templar military house was set, flanked to the west by the Master´s house - the Alcáçova with its tower and to the east the knights´oratorium - the Charola. These two spaces were separated by the vast yard of the castle - today a gardened space.