Cascais Old Fortress Walls

Jose Luis Stock

Although it is not known the date of the construction of the castle of Cascais, it is almost certain that already existed before Portugal was born. The 1992 excavations near the walls revealed Roman remains, opening up still strong hypotheses for the existence of the castle at least in the Muslim era. To consolidate this thesis, Father Marçal da Silveira, rector of the Igreja Matriz de Cascais at the time of the earthquake of 1755, says that the village lost the great castle tower "made by the Moors", including his watch (Torre dos Mouros). Being an important port, where everyone waited for the ideal conditions to enter the bar of Lisbon, and therefore being the target of numerous attacks, it would not make sense not to have an effective system to defend its population. However, it is at the birth of the village Term (in 1370) that an explicit reference to the Castle of Cascais is made for the first time. When 6 years before D. Pedro granted the Charter of the Villa, he made no reference to any castle. The main investigations are due to Ferreira de Andrade, Carlos Ribeiro and Guilherme Cardoso. More recently, Dr. Margarida Magalhães Ramalho, found in the Simancas Archive in Spain two unpublished images that completed the picture we had about the castle: it had seven towers and it could be said that the castle would occupy an area of \u200b\u200b0, 6ha between the current Avenida D. Carlos I, Rua Marques Leal Pancada and Rua Luis Xavier Palmeirim. On the beach side was a barbican (a second smaller wall) for the first defense against enemy landings. On this side there was only one door, and there was another, side, next to which stood the clock tower. The door on this street today was not part of the original fortification configuration. #cascais #history #historiadecascais #arquivohistoricodecascais #historiasdahistoriadecascais # h2c #castelo

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