Last Stronghold of the Templars

Inspired by Jerusalem's Holy Sepulchre church, the Knights Templar built the circular Convento de Cristo, complete with a circular chapel where the Knights attended mass while still on horseback.

International Living Postcards--your daily escape

Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Tomar, Portugal

Unlike the warrior-monks of the Knights Templar (who rode on horseback up the hill to their double-walled castle and abbey), I'm slogging up the steeply cobbled laneway from Tomar's town center on foot.

Stopping for a breather--and to grab a photo of the belfries and russet rooftops below--I disturb three basking lizards; the spring sunshine is warm in this part of central Portugal. The castle hill's Judas trees are ablaze with pinkish-mauve blossoms. (The Latin name for the trees is cercis, but folklore tells it's the tree on which Judas Iscariot hanged himself.)

Dating from 1160 (and built on an old Roman site), Tomar was the last city in Western Europe founded by the Knights Templar. Condemned and persecuted all over the rest of the continent, the Knights were driven ever westward. Charged with banishing the Moors and Islam from the Iberian peninsula, the Templars were still welcomed in Portugal. However, in 1319, they were forced to change their name to the Order of Christ.

It costs just under $6 to step back eight centuries and visit Castelo Templario, which encloses the Convento de Cristo. The Porta de Sangue (Bloody Door) recalls the 1190 defense of the castle when the Knights fought the besieging Moors for six days under the command of their 72-year-old Grand Master, Gualdim Pais.

Go through the Porta da Sol (Door of the Sun) and you're in the heart of the Templar's religious world--the circular chapel where the Knights actually attended mass while still on horseback.

Inspired during the Crusades by Jerusalem's Holy Sepulchre church, the Templars brought the architectural idea of the round temple back to Europe. Here the centerpiece is a gilded octagonal structure that served as an oratory.

The other essential sight is the Chapter Window, a Manueline addition and an extraordinary stone testament to Portugal's Age of Discoveries. (One of the great pioneers of ocean exploration, Prince Henry the Navigator became the Order's Grand Master in 1419.) Crowned by a Templar cross, its motifs of seaweed and serpents, tropical fruits and knotted ship ropes, heraldic emblems, corals and shells combine to create one of the most stunning window frames I've ever seen. The head at the bottom may be the sculptor or the Old Man of the Sea--nobody is sure.

I wish I had more time here. The riverbank town that later grew up below the castle's battlements has some delightful 17th-century houses with tiled facades, black and white mosaic sidewalks, and the only synagogue in Portugal to have survived the Inquisition. During its history it served as a prison, a wine cellar, and a warehouse.

Steenie Harvey
Roving Europe Editor, International Living

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P.S. Another attraction is the Festa dos Tabuleiros. With its roots in pre-Christian fertility rites, the centerpiece of the festival is a parade of hundreds of white-clad "virgins" carrying tabuleiros (trays) piled high with bread and flowers. It only happens every four years--the next event is scheduled for this year, July 6-9.