Tomar is a charming and historically outstanding town on the banks of the
Nabão River. It is dominated by a 12th-century Templar castle containing one of
the country's most significant and impressive monuments, the Convent of
Christ (declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO).
The main shopping street, the pedestrian Rua Serpa Pinto, leads to the
Gothic Church of São João Baptista, on Praça da República, the
town's elegant main square surrounded by 17th-century buildings. The 15th-century church has an elegant Manueline portal and inside are 16th-century
paintings, including a Last Supper by Gregório Lopes, one of the
finest of the country's 16th-century artists.
In the heart of town is a neat grid of streets, and on Rua Dr. Joaquim
Jacinto is a well-preserved synagogue, one of Portugal's oldest,
built in 1430. It was last used as a place of worship in 1497, when King Manuel I expelled
all Jews who refused to convert to Christianity. It has four tall towers
and a vaulted ceiling, and holds a small Jewish Museum named after
Abraham Zacuto, a famous 15th-century astronomer and mathematician who
helped build navigational aids for Vasco da Gama. It contains 15th-century
Jewish tombstones and sacred items donated by Jewish communities around the
world.
Not too far is the 17th-century church of São Francisco with a Match
Museum in its former cloisters. It is an eccentric and interesting
museum with the largest collection in Europe, displaying over 43,000
matchboxes from 104 countries.
On the east side of the river is a 13th-century church that was once the
mother church for mariners in the Age of Discovery. The Church of Santa
Maria do Olival has a Gothic façade and a distinctive three-story bell
tower. Inside are the graves of Templar Masters and an elegant Renaissance
pulpit.
On the hill leading up to the castle is the little Renaissance Nossa Senhora da Conceição Church, built in 1530 with a simple exterior but with elegantly carved Corinthian columns
inside.
Across the old bridge is another small church, that of Santa Iria,
the town's patron saint. She was a young nun who lived in Tomar in the 7th
century, but was murdered and thrown into the river after a feud between two
rival suitors, a nobleman and a monk. A legend says one of them gave her a
potion to appear pregnant and the other killed her in a fit of rage. The
church, built in the 16th century, has a coffered painted ceiling and
17th-century tiles.
The Order of the Knights Templar that helped the Portuguese fight the
Moors in the 12th and 13th centuries were rewarded with extensive land and
political power. King Dinis renamed it the Order of Christ, and castles and churches were
built to protect the Templars. One of those was the castle and convent of
Tomar, one of Portugal's most brilliant architectural accomplishments that
was built in 1162.
In 1418, Prince Henry the Navigator, Grand Master of the Order, built the
extraordinary Charola and the Templars' fortress. In the 1550's the Great
Cloister and Manueline flourishes were added.
An elaborate portal leads to the outstanding nave with exuberant
Manueline decoration. Next to it is the Charola where the Templars attended mass on horseback,
with a layout based on the Rotunda of Jerusalem's Holy Sepulchre. It has a
central octagon of altars and includes 16th-century paintings and frescoes.
From there, the conventual buildings are spread around several cloisters.
The Great Cloister is Renaissance in style with two levels. The ground
level has Tuscan columns and the upper, Ionic.
On a terrace above it is outstanding Manueline decoration, including a
famous window that is the most extraordinary example of Manueline-style
ornament. It was sculpted in 1510 with motifs of the ocean and the Age of Discovery:
tangled "ropes", "seaweed," coral, the Cross of the Order of Christ, and the
royal arms and armillary spheres of King Manuel, all evoking the feeling and
spirit of the great Age of Discovery.
The oldest cloister in the convent is the Gothic Cemetery Cloister with
tiles and tombstones of monks. Vasco da Gama's brother, Diogo da Gama, lays
here.
There is a spectacular festival in town that takes place every four years called Festa dos Tabuleiros ("Festival of
the Platters"). There is a procession of about 400 girls in white carrying towers of
platters with bread and flowers on their heads, along with music and
fireworks. On the following day, bread and wine, blessed by the priest, is
handed out to local families.
Some 20km (12 miles) south of Tomar is the fairytale Templar CASTLE OF
ALMOUROL, romantically sited on a little island in the middle of the
Tagus River. Gualdim Pais, Master of the Order of the Knights Templar,
built it in 1171, and the towers and crenellated walls remain perfectly
preserved. There is a number of legends about this magical place, including
one that says the castle is haunted by the ghost of a princess sighing for
the love of her Moorish slave.
"Originally designed as a monument symbolizing the Reconquest, the Convent of the Knights Templar of Tomar (transferred in 1344 to the Knights of the Order of Christ) came to symbolize just the opposite during the Manueline period - the opening up of Portugal to other civilizations."
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