Evoramonte Alentejo Portugal HD

Dominating the Alentejo plain, at the top of a hill with 481 meters of altitude, there is the Castle of Evoramonte, a town that was distinguished in the history of contemporary Portugal because the Convention was signed there on May 26, 1834, reestablished Peace in Portugal, after several years of bloody civil war between liberals and absolutists.

About your foundation little is known. Probably it was conquered to the Moors by D. Afonso Henriques, in 1166, but there are no reliable sources that can confirm it.

The first mention of Evoramonte arose in the year 1248, when D. Afonso III granted him Charter of Foral, later corroborated and extended in 1271, with the purpose of populating the village.

In 1306, with the aim of protecting the town and its inhabitants, D. Dinis ordered the construction of the medieval walls, which still remain today and maintain their four arched doors from the time of the foundation.

D. Nuno Alvares Pereira receives the village by donation in 1385 and cedes it, in 1461, to his grandson D. Fernando, making it the property of the Duchy of Bragança.

15 of December of 1516 D. Manuel I grants to the town the Charter of Foral of New Reading, confirming the Term Evoramontense.

In February 1531 the village was shaken by a violent earthquake that almost completely destroyed its medieval structures.

To assert the power of the House of Braganza at the time, D. Jaime I and D. Teodósio I had the walls reinforced with cylindrical ramparts and erected the imposing Tower / Paço Ducal, just after the earthquake.

The Tower is a unique example of the transition military architecture, the final Manueline, with no precedent or precedent in Portugal, and which served essentially as the hunting residence of the Dukes of Bragança. Its dominant and scenic position in the middle of the plain fulfills in its entirety the purpose of its construction: to affirm the House of Bragança as the second most powerful of the Kingdom and giving meaning to the maxim "After You, We", that is, after of the King, the House of Bragança. This particularity is strongly present in the design of the building, through the Nodes that involve the same and which are a symbol of the Bragantina heraldry, adopted by the architects responsible for its authors, brothers Francisco and Diogo de Arruda.

The Evoramonte Convention was signed at the house of Joaquim António Sarmago, President of the Chamber at the time, and confirmed the victory of the Liberals, followers of D. Pedro IV, under the absolutists, followers of D. Miguel. This war between siblings would thus end in a modest house in the Rua Direita of this town, where the Dukes of Terceira and Saldanha, by the liberals, and General Joaquim Azevedo e Lemos, absolutist chief, signed the Convention, which resulted in the exile of D. Miguel for Austria and in the triumph of Liberalism in Portugal.