Horta: a fort, a Jesuit college and two convents: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
Old Horta on foot, from the harbour fort up to the Carmelite convent
A church and a fort that watched the sea, a convent that burned and was rebuilt, a Jesuit college that was never finished and a Carmelite convent: Horta's story is one of rebuilding.
The stops
The church goes back to a hermitage founded under the invocation of Santa Cruz by the island's first settler, Joss van Hurtere, and his wife, Beatriz de Macedo. It was inaugurated on 30 August 1675, when her remains were moved to the high altar, and consecrated to Nossa Senhora das Angústias and raised to parish status on 28 November 1684. Work on the current building began in 1800, and it was declared finished in 1861.
Photo: Guillaume Baviere from Helsingborg, Sweden — CC BY 2.0 The cornerstone of this pentagonal fortress was laid in 1567 to help guard the harbour against pirates and privateers, and on 6 September 1589 an English fleet sacked the village and seized the fort's artillery. Just north of it, the walls and walkways of Horta's marina are covered with paintings left by visiting yacht crews. The Azores tourism site calls it a well-established tradition that sailors who dock in Faial leave a painting on the breakwater walls, and legend has it that they reach their destinations safely.
Photo: Vitor Oliveira from Torres Vedras, PORTUGAL — CC BY-SA 2.0 This Franciscan convent was founded in the early 16th century and burned by English corsairs in 1597. A storm in 1668 damaged it badly, so the community built anew on a site farther from the sea, and the present Church of Nossa Senhora do Rosário was built between 1696 and 1700. After religious orders were abolished the convent was donated to the Misericórdia in 1835, and a fire on 4 May 1899 destroyed its hospital and almshouse, though the church was saved.
Photo: Concierge.2C — CC BY-SA 3.0 Francisco de Utra de Quadros, captain-major of Faial, died in 1652 and left his estate to found a Jesuit college in Horta, and the first stone of the church was laid on 21 October 1652. The college building was begun in 1719 and never finished, because the Jesuits were expelled from Portugal, and the church became Horta's Igreja Matriz in 1825. Today the north wing houses the town hall, and the Museu da Horta, created in 1977, is on the upper floor of the south wing.
Photo: Concierge.2C — CC BY-SA 3.0 Construction began in 1652 under the influence of D. Helena de Boim, who first built a chapel to Nossa Senhora da Boa Nova and then a hospice for Carmelite friars, and gave the Carmelites her possessions and the land beside the chapel. The building has been rebuilt after earthquakes on Faial, mostly after the one in 1926. The church, with two bell towers topped by bulbous domes, stands on a platform reached by Travessa do Carmo, a cobbled staircase, and since 2021 it has housed Horta's Sacred Art Museum.
Photo: José Luís Ávila Silveira/Pedro Noronha e Costa — Public domain
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