Castelo de São Jorge: The Citadel and the Siege of 1147
Why is it significant?
Pass through the inner gate and you are inside the citadel, the castle within the castle, its high walls and square towers closing around a courtyard shaded by trees. Listen for a strange, wailing cry... the peacocks that wander the grounds as if they owned them.
Key Facts
| Place | Castelo de São Jorge: The Citadel and the Siege of 1147 |
|---|---|
| Address | Castelo de São Jorge, Rua de Santa Cruz do Castelo, 1100-129 Lisboa, Portugal |
| Geo Coordinates | 38.71360, -9.13350 |
| Part of Walk | Saints, Sieges and Stairways: Alfama and the Castelo de São Jorge in Lisbon |
| Generated | Generated |
Pass through the inner gate and you are inside the citadel, the castle within the castle, its high walls and square towers closing around a courtyard shaded by trees. Listen for a strange, wailing cry... the peacocks that wander the grounds as if they owned them.
Everyone who has ever ruled Lisbon wanted this hilltop. There were people up here in the Iron Age, then Romans, then Visigoths, and from the eighth century the Muslim rulers of al-Andalus, who built the fortress whose walls still shape the castle. In 1147 these walls faced the moment that made Lisbon Portuguese.
That summer a fleet of crusaders, English, Flemish and German, on their way to the Holy Land, put in at Porto. The bishop there persuaded them to stop and help Afonso Henriques, the first king of Portugal, take Lisbon instead, with the promise of plunder. The siege lasted from July until late October. There were siege towers, mines dug under the walls, hunger inside the city... and we know a remarkable amount about it because one of the crusaders, an Anglo-Norman priest, wrote a long eyewitness letter about the conquest.
And then there is the legend of Martim Moniz. The story goes that this knight saw a castle gate half open and threw his own body into the gap, so that it could not be closed until his comrades forced their way in. He died there, says the tale, and Lisbon later named a gate, a square and a metro station after him. Historians are cautious about the details, but the city loves him all the same.
One of the towers here is called the Tower of Ulysses, after a cheerful old legend that the Greek hero founded Lisbon on his way home from Troy, giving the city its ancient name, Olisipo. Inside it, a camera obscura projects live images of the city onto a white dish, a periscope view of the streets you have just climbed. Now come back out of the citadel to the great terrace near the entrance, where old cannons point out over the rooftops.