Porto de Mós

Castle • Porto de Mós, Leiria

In Porto de Mós, the castle is recognised from afar by the green spires that give it an almost theatrical silhouette. The fortress began under the initiative of Portugal’s first kings and was enlarged by King Dinis, but it gained its most distinctive profile in the fifteenth century, when Afonso, Count of Ourém, added a palace-like residence with a panoramic loggia and a pentagonal plan of unusual clarity. On the eve of Aljubarrota, it housed the Portuguese army; afterwards, it moved away from war and closer to comfort and display. Abandonment and earthquakes, above all the one in 1755, left it in ruins, until twentieth-century restorations gave the town back its most emblematic image. From the top of the hill, between pale stone and balconies open to the landscape, one understands why this castle seems to bring together two natures: a medieval fortress and a dreamed palace.