Castle of Portel

The Castle of Portel (Portuguese: Castelo de Portel) is a medieval castle located in the municipality of Portel in the district of Evora in Portugal.

Construction was started during the reign of King Denis (1279–1325).

In the context of the 1383–1385 Portuguese Interregnum crisis, Fernão Gonçalves de Sousa, mayor of Portel, took the sides with the Kingdom of Castile, and for fear of the residents rebelling, took their weapons to all and put them in the castle. In November 1384, the development of the Alentejo campaign by the forces of the Constable D. Nuno Alvares Pereira, a cleric of Portel, name John Matthew, opened them the village doors, facilitating the achievement of settlement and surrender the castle. When the crisis was over, the land was donated back to the House of Braganza. Later, under the reign of King Manuel I, the town and its castle are figured by Duarte de Armas (Book of Fortresses, c. 1509).

At that time the castle was remodeled structure giving way to the Palace of the Dukes of Braganza and a barbican (1510), getting the works in charge of the architect-royal Francisco de Arruda, for instance D. Jaime, Duke of Braganza.

Lost its defensive function, away from border and the main access roads to the Alentejo region, the castle was gradually abandoned until becoming ruins in the nineteenth century.

In the early twentieth century, the whole was classified as a National Monument by decree, published on 23 June 1910. The intervention of the government was felt on time, in 1938, at the initiative of the Directorate General for National Buildings and Monuments (DGEMN).

Property of the House of Braganza Foundation, the degradation of the whole continued to progress until the collapse of a cylindrical tower of the palace and, more recently, in February 1998, a wall portion adjacent to the donjon, an element that had been the subject of intervention in the 1980s the new intervention took place in 1999, in charge of DGEMN through its Regional Directorate South, based on traditional building techniques. The set awaits, however, a comprehensive plan of research and musealization.

The castle in the Gothic style, has pentagonal plant reinforced by circular plan towers at the corners. Its shape, novelty in the Portuguese military architecture at the time, seems to have been inspired by the Château d'Angers, France.

Text adapted from “Castle of Portel” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Castle of Portel ranks #5,883 of 8,133 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #103 of the 205 mapped in Portugal. Founded 1262, it is older than 69% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 860 atlas entries founded in the 13th century. 4 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Évora, 34 km away. It is one of the 48 landmarks on the atlas's regional map of the Alentejo. See how Portugal compares in the castle statistics.

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Read the full history on Wikipedia ↗