The castle of Mourão and the church which was saved from fire

Imagine a huge forget-me-not blue water dam in the middle of a hilly landscape where olive trees and cork oaks grow. Cows and sheep are grazing in the sun and you can spot several villages on top of those hills protected by castle walls and high towers. One of those villages is called Mourão which is also a municipality of the Alentejo region. The castle is shown in the town heraldry as well.

To the west you can spot the old village of Monsaraz across the water. To the east you can see across the border to Spain which lies 8 km away. The view from the castle is indeed splendid and breathtaking on a sunny day. If you've got just a few minutes to take a break, do walk up there and get a better picture of the landscape.

Very little is unfortunately known about the prehistory of this place. There where clashes in this area between Christian and Muslim troops from the 9th century A.D. and onward. After the Christians had reconquered the territory, it was given to the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta. Since this is a military religious order, they kept the region under control by building several fortifications under their Prior of the Knights Hospitaller Gonçalo Viegas, and got their first rights of foral (independence from local feudal lords) granted by the king D. Sancho II in 1226 A.D. The castle that you can see today in Mourão started to be built by the Mestre João Afonso in 1343 by the order of the king D. Afonso IV. At that time it was more to defend the Portuguese against the Spanish, rather than the Moors. It was then built in the Gothic style with very little decoration, being mostly a functional building. In this case the main responsible individuals for the reinforcements where two regal architect brothers, Francisco and Diogo de Arruda. The barbican and ditch surrounding the castle is attributed to them for example.

After Portugal got independent again from Spain in 1640 (we had a co joined rule under the Spanish kings Felipe II, III and IV starting from 1580 until 1640) this castle and the frontier towards Spain got even more reinforced. People did not want to be taken by surprise or to become Spanish again so the fortification line was quite impressive and many foreign architects were hired to improve the defensive architecture. In this case the foreign architects were Nicolau de Langres and Pierre de Saint-Colombe. At this castle you can see the star shaped outline of the fortification, a modern defense against artillery attacks back then which the Dutch were the first to introduce in Europe. Unfortunately, this place was severed badly from the great earthquake in 1755 and has since then fallen into the ruins which you see today. It was classified as a monument of public interest in 1957 but still is in a bit of a degraded state. Still, it gives it a bit of a romantic and scenic flair, this imposing monument of power has lost a lot but also gained with time. And the old cannons are still pointing towards Spain...

The main town church surrounded by the castle walls is dedicated to the Nossa Senhora das Candeias - Our Lady of the Lights. When we arrived there for a visit there was an old lady cleaning up something in the corner, a whole lot of soot and candle grease on the floor which had stained the wall pretty badly. Just 2 nights before there had been a town festival at the castle in honour of Our Lady of the Lights. The whole town had been there to celebrate and they had left some real candles lit in the church after the celebrations. In the middle of the night they had caught fire and started to melt down as well as creating a thick form of black smoke. Had it not been for the miraculous sudden urge of a 20-year old to go there in the middle of the night to pay his respects (he had a key to enter), the fire would have spread and destroyed the whole church with it's valuable old interior and huge fresco. Call it a miracle, fate or just pure luck. Our Lady of the Lights would have had a bit too much of it if it were not for that young man who saved the church from burning down.

The church began to be built in 1681, in a discrete and austere Baroque style between two Gothic towers of the castle. It was a replacement for an earlier church which had been badly damaged under the Restauration War in the 1600s. The main sacral sculpture of the church depicts Our Lady of the Lights, and it is probably a remain from the older church which stood here, since she is represented in a Manuelino-Gothic style, earlier than the Baroque church of today. The big fresco painting is from the 1700s and was badly damaged when the earthquake struck, and the cracks are still visible today.

The town is lovely at this time of year when all the orange trees carry fruit, you can walk along the calm streets and enjoy the view of both the castle up ahead and the fruits surrounding you.