Location: Palmela, Setúbal District, 25 km (16 mi) South of Lisbon Map
Palmela Castle is a medieval fortress situated 25 km (16 mi) South
of Lisbon in a city of Palmela in Setúbal District, Portugal. This
strategic hill was occupied since the Neolithic times. The name of
the settlement comes from a Roman founder Aulio Cornelius Palma
(praetor of Lusitania province) who established this city in the
ancient times.
Moors or Arabs apparently were the one who erected their first
fortress here in the 8th century AD. They greatly expanded their
fortifications between 10th and 12th centuries to protect their
conquests. However they lost it during the conquest of the peninsula
to the Christian Portuguese armies in the 1147 led by king D. Afonso
Henriques. Knight- monks of order of Santiago established their
monastery here. It was later reconstructed and further increased
during reign of king John I in the early 15th century. It came handy
as a prison for bishop of Évora who was thrown to prison here for
conspiring against king John II.
Changing military tactics and weapons did not made this imposing
fortress completely obsolete. During War of Spanish Succession of
1702- 1714 the castle was rebuild to fit the cannons that were fired
from this dominating location. In 1755 a great earthquake badly
damaged the defences and made castle impossible to use for military
purposes.
The early human occupation of the region dates
back to prehistory, particularly to the Neolithic period, according
to the archaeological testimonies abundant in it. Some scholars
point to the date of 310 BC, for the foundation of a settlement on
the site of modern Palmela, fortified at the time of the
romanization of the Iberian Peninsula in 106 by a praetor of
Lusitania, named Aulius Cornelius (or Aulius Cornelius Palma,
according to others). Modern archaeological research shows, however,
that the subsequent occupation of the site was uninterrupted,
initially by Visigoths and later by the Muslims, the latter
responsible for the early fortification between the 8th and 9th
centuries, greatly expanded between the 10th and 12th centuries.
The medieval castle
At the time of the christian Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula,
after the conquest of Lisbon (1147) by forces of D. Afonso Henriques
(1112-1185) did not fall in the same year, Sintra, Almada, and
Palmela. On the occasion, the Muslim forces defending Palmela
abandoned her and took refuge in Alcácer do Sal. In this way, the
Portuguese forces only seized the village and its dominions. The
Muslim forces, however, soon reorganized, recovering the Southern
Bank of the Tagus river. The Christians reconquered Palmela in 1158.
Again lost, it was definitely conquered by the sovereign on 24 June
1165. From the following year onwards, work on strengthening was
undertaken.
With the accession of King Sancho I (1185-1211) to the throne, the
settlement and its domains were donated by the sovereign to the
Military Order of Santiago, along with Almada and Alcácer do Sal
(1186), at which time Palmela received foral, passed by his master.
These locations would fall again in the face of the onslaught of the
Almohad Caliphate under the command of Caliph Iacube Almançor, who,
having reconquered the Algarve, advanced northward, successively
tearing the castle of Alcácer do Sal, The Castle of Palmela and the
castle of Almada (1190-1191) from Portuguese rule. Palmela's
defenses were badly damaged at the time. It, according to some of
the previously 1194, or, more likely, in 1205, the king enjoined
him, necessary, in their defence, and confirming the donation of
these domains to the monks of the Order, and it was there that they
established the headquarters earlier on the 1210, as in the
testament of the lord, recorded in the year, as they are referred to
as friars from Portugal. Only after the Battle of Navas de Tolosa
(1212), in which a decisive victory was recorded for the peninsular
Christians, were the Lost Lands reconquered beyond the borders that
stretched from the Tagus river to Évora.
King Afonso III (1248-1279), on the 24th of February, in 1255,
confirmed the Order of Santiago, in the person of his Master, dom
Paio Peres Correia and appointed commander of the domains and
castles, donated by D. Sancho I and confirmed by king Afonso II
(1211-1223), namely: (Alcácer do Sal, Palmela, Almada, Arruda. His
son and successor, D. Dinis (1279-1325), confirmed the Foral to the
village (1323), believing that from this phase the construction of
the keep in Gothic style, defending the main gate.
At the end of the reign of Ferdinand (1367-1383), when the siege of
Lisbon by Castilian troops (march 1382), the suburbs of this village
to the South were also looted and burned: and so much they dared
[the Castilian troops], without finding anyone to contradict him,
who went in batels by the Coina River above, and went there on land,
and went to burn the outskirts of Palmela, which are hence two great
leagues (Fernão Lopes).
With the outbreak of the crisis of 1383-1385, The Master of
Santiago, Fernando Afonso de Albuquerque, in the spring of 1384,
travelled to Lisbon in support of the Master of Avis, then Regent by
popular acclamation, having integrated the second Embassy sent to
England.
Months later, during the siege of Lisbon by the castilians, he was
at the top of the towers of the Castle of Palmela, the Constable, D.
Nuno Alvares Pereira, who, after the victory at the battle of the
Sometimes (1384), lit large bonfires to alert the Master and the
city's approach, which, according to the chronicler, was a cause of
great joy among the besieged (Fernão Lopes). John I's Chronicle).
During his reign, John I (1385-1433) carried out works of
enlargement and reinforcement in the castle (1423), and also
determined the erection of the church and Convent where the Order of
Santiago, emancipated from Castile, will definitively settle from
1443.
In the context of the plot by The Duke of Viseu against John II
(1481-1495), aborted in 1484 with the death of the first at the
hands of the second, one of the conjurers, the bishop of Évora,
Garcia de Meneses, was imprisoned in the cistern of Palmela Castle,
where he died a few days later. The episode, summarily narrated by
Rui de Pina and Garcia de Resende, is a little more illuminating in
the latter's chronicle: the bishop of Évora, at the time of the
death of the Duke [of Aveiro], was with the Queen, and there he went
to call him, on the part of el-rei, Captain Fernão Martins; and on
his way out, he was soon arrested and taken with a lot of people and
a lot of message to the castle of Palmela and put in a waterless
cistern that is inside the Keep of menagem, where a few days later
he died, and they say with pot.
In the 16th century, King Manuel I (1495-1521) granted the New Foral
to the village (1512).
From the war of the Spanish Succession to the present day
Later, in the context of the war of the Spanish Succession, Pedro II
(1667-1706) determined to modernize the castle's defences, which
received rammed lines, adapting it to artillery fire. In the 18th
century, the structure of the castle was seriously damaged by the
1755 earthquake. Still, he remained occupied by the nuns of Palmela
until 1834, with the extinction of religious orders in Portugal. It
was then occupied by a contingent of the Portuguese army, and there
was born the Explorer Brito Capelo (1841), the son of the garrison
commander.
It is classified as a National Monument by decree published on June
23, 1910.
In the period leading up to the commemoration of the centenarians
(1940), a number of interventions in the castle were promoted,
consisting of the overthrow of buildings and alterations in the
windows of the Church of Santiago.
The facilities of the old convent were requalified from 1945 as
pousada, integrating, from the 1970s, the Inns network of Portugal.
Since the end of the 20th century, archaeological prospecting work
has taken place in the castle grounds, turning some spaces into
museum rooms, services and trade areas.
In 1971, the Spanish director Amando de Ossorio used the castle as
one of the sets of the film "La Noche del Terror Ciego". In 2005,
SIC recorded an episode of the children's Series "an adventure based
on the book" An Adventure in the castle of The Winds " by Isabel
Alçada and Ana Maria Magalhães (writer).