Alcobaça: the monastery town between two rivers: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
From the castle hill to the monastery and the river
Alcobaça grew up around the monastery that King Afonso Henriques founded, in the valley where the rivers Alcoa and Baça meet, and the walk goes from the hill down into that valley, then out through the 19th- and 20th-century town that grew beside it.
The stops
The castle stands on a hill about 70 m high on the left bank of the Baça. Afonso Henriques rebuilt it on the ruins of an earlier fortress in 1147, and after Moorish attacks in the 1190s King Sancho had it rebuilt again for the monks of Alcobaça and the people living here. The 1755 earthquake destroyed it, and only ruins remain.
Photo: Threeohsix — CC BY-SA 4.0 In 1914 the architect Raul Lino designed this house for Vieira Natividade, as his home and as a place for his collections of archaeology, ethnography and ceramics and his library. The works were finished in 1917. It stands on the town's old Rossio, in front of the monastery, on the corner of Praça 25 de Abril.
Photo: Threeohsix — CC BY-SA 4.0 King Afonso Henriques founded the monastery in 1153 as a gift to Bernard of Clairvaux, and its church, about 106 m long, is the largest in Portugal. Inside, in the transept, King Pedro I and Inês de Castro lie in tombs that face each other, his resting on lions and hers on half-human, half-beast figures. Inês was murdered in 1355 on the orders of Pedro's father, Afonso IV, and the monastery has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1989.
Photo: Alvesgaspar — CC BY-SA 4.0 José Pereira da Silva Rino, a farmer and landowner, had this romantic chalet built in 1891 and 1892. It is known for the blue colour of its façade. It stands on land of the old Cistercian enclosure, beside the river Alcoa, and is one of the town's good examples of romantic residential architecture. In the 1970s Maria Cristina Rino gave it to the religious congregation of Saint Joseph of Cluny, and it now serves as a children's wellbeing centre.
Photo: Threeohsix — CC BY-SA 4.0 Where the rivers Alcoa and Baça meet, this building dates from 1870, when it was a house built for Araújo Guimarães, a man back from emigration. It later became a food factory that made Cister flour, condensed milk, sweets and ginja until it closed in 1985, and the town library moved in on 23 November 2001. Behind it lies the Jardim do Amor, a small garden on the riverbank.
Photo: Threeohsix — CC BY-SA 4.0 The chapel standing today dates from 1648, but the town's heritage page traces the first building here to 1152, a refuge for the monks who founded Alcobaça while their monastery was going up. The high altar has a 17th-century gilded wood altarpiece with four paintings of the Virgin. In the mid-18th century the Colégio da Conceição, which had worked here, moved into the monastery.
Photo: Threeohsix — CC BY-SA 4.0 In the last decade of the 19th century Francisco de Oriol Pena had this chalet built as his home, on the land of the old Quinta da Gafa. The council bought the estate in 1931 and in 1948 the building became the Paços do Concelho, the town hall. It is a romantic chalet influenced by Swiss and northern European houses, designed by the architect Gerard van Kricken, with steeply pitched roofs and Gothic-Renaissance revival details. The romantic pond beside it dates from the same time, and it once had swans and geese.
Photo: Mister No — CC BY 3.0 This is where the town does its everyday shopping. Stalls sell fish, fresh fruit and vegetables, bread and flowers, and some vendors sell chickens, quail, rabbits and eggs to people who want to raise animals at home. Some stallholders travel in every week from Valado, and family members often work the same stall.
Photo: GualdimG — CC BY-SA 4.0 The Cine-Teatro opened on 18 December 1944, in the middle of the Second World War, and many people have counted it among the most beautiful in the country. João D'Oliva Monteiro had the idea, and the Swiss architect Ernesto Korrodi and his son Camilo designed it. On the main façade a bas-relief by the sculptor Luís Fernandes shows an enthroned woman between two men holding the masks of tragedy and comedy. The town council bought the building in 1998, and it reopened on 12 November 2004.
Photo: Threeohsix — CC BY-SA 4.0
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