Monuments

This surprising building is an almost unique example of its kind in Portugal. Built at the end of the fifteenth century in the reign of D. João II, but only completed in the reign of D. Manuel II, it was designed by D. Diogo da Silveira, the 2nd Baron of Alvito, although the royal charter had in fact been granted to his father in 1482, by D. Afonso V. In 1531, the castle played host to D. João III and his wife Catarina of Bragança, who gave birth to the prince D. Manuel here, although he died shortly afterwards.

The quadrangular building has an inner courtyard and is completed by four semicircular towers in the corners. On the main façade are the Fountain Tower (so-called because it was from here that the town´s water supply originally came) and the Bell Tower. The windows, with their double horseshoe arches surmounted with bricks, betray the typically exotic Arabesque influences in this palatial architecture.