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The hill
People lived on the castle hill by the 8th century BC
Human occupation of the castle hill dates to at least the 8th century BC, and the oldest fortifications date from the 2nd century BC. Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans and Moors held the hill before the Portuguese conquest.
1147
The Portuguese took the castle in the Siege of Lisbon in 1147
The castle and the city were conquered from the Moors in 1147 by Afonso Henriques and northern European knights in the Siege of Lisbon, during the Second Crusade. It was the only notable success of that failed crusade.
A legend
Legend says Martim Moniz held a castle door open with his own body
According to an oft-repeated legend, the knight Martim Moniz noticed that one of the doors was open. He prevented the Moors from closing it by throwing his own body into the breach, which let Christian soldiers enter.
The wall
King Ferdinand built a wall with 77 towers in two years
Between 1373 and 1375 King Ferdinand I ordered the Cerca Nova, a walled compound that enclosed all but the north flank of the castle. Completed in two years, it had 77 towers, 34 or 38 gates, and a perimeter of 5,400 metres.
77towers on the Cerca Nova wall
The archive
The Torre do Tombo kept the kingdom's records from 1378
From 1378 many of the kingdom's records were housed in the Torre do Tombo, the Tower of the Archive, until the earthquake of 1755. The Portuguese Royal Archive is still called the Torre do Tombo after that tower.
Day 1, midday
It comes after Sé de Lisboa. Then Miradouro das Portas do Sol.
More stories from this trip idea
The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article São Jorge Castle, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.