The Monastery of Alcobaça

The impressive Monastery of Santa Maria de Alcobaça, north of Lisbon , was founded in the 12 th century by the first monarch of Portugal , King Alfonso I. (Dom Afonso Henriques), as an offering of thanks for the capture of Santarem from the Moors. The construction began in 1178, the year before Pope Alexander III recognized the new Christian nation of Portugal . The Abbey belonged to the French Cistercian Order of Saint Bernard de Clairvaux who wrote the Rule for the original Poor Knights of Christ (Templars). The Alcobaça Abbey resembled the mother house at Clairvaux France .

Beforethe "Black Death" reduced the number to eight, there was said to have been 999 monks at the abbey. From the mid-13 th century, the monks washed their hands of any farm work, to devote themselves to teaching. They founded the country's first public school in 1269, and provided books and money to help Dom Dinis to establish the University of Lisbon , which was later moved to Coimbra .

Junot's soldiers pillaged the monastery in 1810, and the monks were expelled in 1834, when the religious orders were extinguished.

The abbey contains the tombs of those impossible lovers, Dom Pedro and Ines de Castro. After the death of his wife, Prince Dom Pedro fell in love with her Spanish lady-in-waiting, Dona Ines de Castro. Fearful of her brother's influence, leading nobles poisoned King Dom Afonso IV's mind against her. He sanctioned her murder, unaware that the couple had married in secret in Braganca, to legitimize their children. When Dom Pedro succeeded to the throne two years later, in 1357, two of the three murderers were brought to him at Santarem , tied to an ox-yoke. He is reported to have ripped out their hearts and eaten them, before exhuming Ines' decomposing body and compelling the nobility to do homage to her, prior to her entombment in the abbey.

The tomb of Dom Pedro and Ines de Castro stand in the transepts, foot to foot, as requested, so that on Judgment Day they will open their eyes and see one another.

In the course of centuries, the Monastery of Alcobaça has been much "embellished" and now displays a melange of styles of which the baroque stands out overwhelmingly.

The size of the Alcobaça Abbey, the clarity of its architectural style, the beauty of the materials used and the care with which it was built make it a masterpiece of Gothic Cistercian art. The Monastery of Alcobaça was added to UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1989.