At the highest point in the city stands the castle, built in the twelfth century to watch over and defend the region. It is reached via the Rua da Olaria.
The sturdy keep, which dominates the whole of the walled enclosure of the former parade ground, and the difficulties experienced in gaining access to this space highlight the problems that Ferdinand the Great must have faced when capturing the city from the Moors, a fact which is clearly documented in the General Chronicle of Spain.
Some sections of the early thirteenth-century town wall are still intact, with some of the houses in the present-day residential quarter having been built up against them, as well as two gates (Porta dos Fogos and Porta do Sol).
The tower next to the first of these gates previously housed the Town Hall in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. There still exists the enormous cistern, the largest one yet discovered in Portugal, covered by a powerful-looking vault that is supported by thick pillars and gives the impression of a huge underground cathedral. |