Convento de Santos-o-Novo: The Convent of the Knightly Ladies
Why is it significant?
Look at the length of that façade, row after row of windows marching along the hillside above the river. It is one of the most imposing convent buildings in eastern Lisbon, and most people who rattle past on the trains below never even notice it.
Key Facts
| Place | Convento de Santos-o-Novo: The Convent of the Knightly Ladies |
|---|---|
| Address | Largo de Santos-o-Novo, 1170 Lisboa, Portugal |
| Geo Coordinates | 38.72110, -9.11820 |
| Part of Walk | Lisbon in Blue and White: Graça, São Vicente & the Azulejo Trail |
| Generated | Generated |
Look at the length of that façade, row after row of windows marching along the hillside above the river. It is one of the most imposing convent buildings in eastern Lisbon, and most people who rattle past on the trains below never even notice it.
This is the Convento de Santos-o-Novo, and its story is unusual. It was built for the comendadeiras of the Order of Santiago, noblewomen linked to a military order of knights, who lived as religious women but kept a rank and a dignity of their own. They had been living in an older convent on the other side of the city, Santos-o-Velho, Old Santos, and in the early seventeenth century they moved here, to the new one. Santos-o-Novo, New Santos.
The Santos, the saints, are Veríssimo, Máxima and Júlia, three early Christian martyrs of Lisbon. Tradition says they were killed around the year 300, during the Roman persecutions, and that their bodies were thrown into the river, only to be washed back onto the shore. Tradition holds that their relics travelled with the nuns from one convent to the other.
Behind these walls lies a cloister, and convents like this one were exactly the places where the art of the azulejo flourished: rich, enclosed communities with long corridors, chapels and refectories to decorate, and time to commission panel after panel of saints, flowers and scenes from scripture. Much of Portugal's finest tilework was made for eyes that almost nobody from outside ever saw.
When the religious orders were dissolved in the nineteenth century, convents across Lisbon were emptied, sold or turned into barracks, schools and offices, and many of their tiles were scattered. A few hundred metres further east, one of them was saved in a different way. Follow the street along the hillside towards Madre de Deus, to the convent that became the home of the azulejo itself.