We slowed our steps, almost tiptoeing as if we were crossing a threshold of mystery, when we entered the Convent of Christ. Founded in 1160 by Dom Gualdim Pais, Grand Master of the Knights Templar in Portugal, it rose as a religious military stronghold on the shifting frontier of the Christian Reconquest.
The Knights Templar were active in Portugal for nearly two centuries. By the early 14th century, as the Templar order was being dissolved across Europe, the Portuguese branch reinvented itself as the Order of the Knights of Christ. From here, the order survived and thrived, turning this very convent into a powerful headquarters that helped finance and direct Portugal’s great maritime expeditions of the 15th and 16th centuries.
The convent was enormous, a true maze. Every nook felt like the start of an endless wandering through its corridors—some so tall we had to tilt our heads back to see the ceiling, others so low we had to stoop to squeeze through.
The convent was said to be modeled after Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Dome of the Rock. Over a span of five centuries, however, a series of additional structures stretched and distorted the original plan, leaving the complex elongated and irregular. At its heart stood the main altar, the convent’s greatest attraction—massive yet oddly cramped, crowded with pillars and crowned by a dome. It was unlike any other altar we had ever seen.
Random photographs of our travels. Memories found and captured in a photograph.
Photographs can be viewed and printed at https://gsilvosatrekpix.pixels.com.
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