The Moorish Castle
Isolated on its lofty perch, one of the peaks in the Sintra Hills, the Moorish Castle is a fortification founded in the 10th century during the period the Moors occupied the Iberian Peninsula.
Its famous walls snake across the hills with their granite blocks interlinking boulders and cliffs.
Its parapet walk provides stunningly unique views out over the town, the Palace of Pena and, further in the distance, the greens of these hills contrast with the blues of the Atlantic Ocean.
A privileged vantage point looking out over the Atlantic coastline, the floodplain and the Sintra Hills, the millennium-old Moorish Castle, founded under Islamic rule, occupied a then strategic position for defending both the surrounding territory and the maritime access routes to the city of Lisbon. The artefacts found on this site identify how, in between the walls and their adjoining areas, there lived a population in an area now named the Islamic Quarter.
The silos, structures carved into the rocks, may be encountered both inside and outside the fortification and were used to conserve certain foodstuffs such as cereals.
The Moors lived here through to 1147, when Sintra was handed over to Afonso Henriques, the first King of Portugal, following the conquest of the cities of Lisbon and Santarém. Strategically and as a means of defending these lands, the running of the town of Sintra and its immediate hinterlands was bestowed on Gualdim Pais, a master in the Knights Templar, who received a charter in 1154.
With the settlement of a Christian population in the Moorish Castle, the
Islamic Quarter began to disappear and give way to a Medieval town with its occupation ongoing through to the 15th century. At that time, the site was steadily subject to abandonment given that, with the conflicts between the Moors and Christians long over, the population no longer felt the need to seek shelter within the vicinity of the fortification. This Medieval town included the Church of São Pedro de Canaferrim, built between the two rings of walls.
Already into the 19th century, and in keeping with the Romantic spirit prevailing in that period, King Ferdinand II undertook restoration work on the castle, breathing new life into the medieval imaginary surrounding this site. These renovation works damaged part of the Christian burial grounds of the Church and, for this reason, the order was given to build a tomb to house the bones found there. Given the inability to distinguish whether these were Christian or Moorish human remains, the tomb bears the inscription: “What man brought together, only God may separate”.