Portugal

The Marian sanctuary at Cova da Iria where the Virgin Mary was reported to appear to three shepherd children, Lúcia, Francisco, and Jacinta, six times between May 13 and October 13, 1917. Around the Chapel of the Apparitions built in 1919 stand the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary (first stone 1928, consecrated 1953, with a 65-meter bell tower) and the Basilica of the Most Holy Trinity consecrated in 2007.

Papal Minor Basilica (Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary, 1954, and Basilica of the Most Holy Trinity, 2012), National Architectural Heritage of Portugal (SIPA 20204)Rua de Santa Isabel 360, 2495-424 Fátima (Cova da Iria, thành phố Ourém)

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The Royal Monastery of Santa Maria de Belém of the Order of Saint Jerome (Mosteiro dos Jerónimos) beside the Tagus estuary in Belém, Lisbon, standing as the crowning masterpiece of Portuguese Late Gothic Manueline architecture. Begun on 6 January 1501 by King Manuel I and completed in the late 16th century under master architects Diogo de Boitaca, João de Castilho, Diogo de Torralva, and Jérôme de Rouen using revenues from the eastern spice tax (Vintena da Pimenta) on the site of the Ermida do Restelo chapel where Vasco da Gama and his crew prayed before sailing to India in 1497, it is celebrated for its 32-meter carved South Portal, its 55-meter two-story lioz limestone cloister, and the stone tombs of Vasco da Gama and poet Luís de Camões, inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983.

UNESCO World Heritage Site (1983)Praça do Império, 1400-206 Lisboa, quận Belém, bờ Bắc cửa sông Tagus (Tejo), Bồ Đào Nha

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A monumental Catholic pilgrimage landscape on the slopes of Mount Espinho overlooking Braga in northern Portugal, representing a pinnacle of European Baroque Sacred Mountain (Sacri Monti) design. Tracing its origins to a 1373 Holy Cross chapel, the sanctuary was developed from 1722 under Archbishop Rodrigo de Moura Teles and crowned with a Neoclassical church built between 1784 and 1811 by architect Carlos Amarante. It is renowned for its whitewashed and granite zigzag ceremonial stairway climbing 116 meters across 577 steps (583 including landings) in three symbolic flights (the Portico Stairway, the Stairway of the Five Senses, and the Stairway of the Three Theological Virtues), alongside the world's oldest operating water-counterbalance funicular (opened in 1882), elevated to a Minor Basilica by Pope Francis in 2015 and inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2019.

UNESCO World Heritage Site (2019)Estrada do Bom Jesus, đồi Espinho, giáo xứ Tenões, thành phố Braga, miền Bắc Bồ Đào Nha

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Đại tu viện Dòng Đa Minh tại thị trấn Batalha (tỉnh Leiria), được vua João I khởi công năm 1386 để tạ ơn Đức Trinh Nữ Maria sau chiến thắng Aljubarrota (1385) bảo vệ nền độc lập Bồ Đào Nha. Xây dựng suốt hơn một thế kỷ dưới bảy triều vua với sự giao thoa giữa kiến trúc Gothic Flamboyant và Manueline, quần thể nổi tiếng với Nhà nguyện Người Sáng lập (nơi an táng vua João I, hoàng hậu Philippa xứ Lancaster và Hoàng tử Henry Nhà Hàng Hải), Phòng Hội đồng vòm đá 19 mét không cột chống và Những Nhà nguyện Chưa Hoàn thiện (Capelas Imperfeitas) lộ thiên, được UNESCO công nhận Di sản Thế giới năm 1983.

Di sản Thế giới UNESCO (1983)Largo do Infante Dom Henrique, 2440-109 Batalha, quận Leiria, miền Trung Bồ Đào Nha

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Ngôi nhà thờ cổ nhất thủ đô Lisboa tọa lạc tại khu phố cổ Alfama, do vị vua đầu tiên của Bồ Đào Nha là Afonso Henriques khởi dựng năm 1147 ngay sau cuộc tái chiếm thành phố trên nền đại thánh đường Hồi giáo cũ và di chỉ La Mã cổ đại. Mang dáng dấp một pháo đài Romanesque với hai tháp chuông có lỗ châu mai, công trình kết hợp hành lang chín nhà nguyện Gothic, tu viện thế kỷ 13 và không gian khảo cổ dưới lòng đất, đồng thời là nơi lưu giữ thánh tích Thánh Vinh Sơn và giếng đá rửa tội của Thánh Antôn thành Padova.

Di tích Quốc gia Bồ Đào Nha (1907)Largo da Sé, 1100-585 Lisboa, khu phố cổ Alfama, thủ đô Lisboa, Bồ Đào Nha

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The Royal Cistercian Abbey of Santa Maria de Alcobaça in Leiria District, founded in April 1153 by Portugal's first king, Afonso Henriques, as a gift to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux after the reconquest of Santarém. Built from 1178 and consecrated in 1252 on the model of Clairvaux Abbey in France, it houses the largest church in Portugal (106 meters long), the earliest Gothic monument in the country, an eighteenth-century kitchen traversed by a channel of the Alcoa River, and the celebrated fourteenth-century carved limestone tombs of King Pedro I and Inês de Castro, inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1989.

UNESCO World Heritage Site (1989, Ref. 505) and National Monument of Portugal (1910)Praça 25 de Abril, 2460-018 Alcobaça, Leiria District, Oeste, Portugal

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The monumental fortress-monastery of the Knights Templar and the Military Order of Christ crowning a wooded hill above the Nabão River in Tomar, Santarém District. Founded on 1 March 1160 by Templar Grand Master Gualdim Pais around a 16-sided Romanesque rotunda (Charola) modeled on the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and transferred in 1319 to the Order of Christ led in the 15th and 16th centuries by Prince Henry the Navigator and King Manuel I, it unites eight historic cloisters with Diogo de Arruda's iconic Manueline Chapter House Window and was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983.

UNESCO World Heritage Site (1983, Ref. 265) and National Monument of Portugal (1907)Colina do Castelo, 2300-000 Tomar, Santarém District, Ribatejo, Portugal

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The Romanesque-Gothic fortress cathedral crowning the granite hill of Pena Ventosa above the Douro River in the Historic Centre of Porto. Begun around 1110 under Bishop Hugo and completed in the 13th century with a Gothic cloister added in 1385 under King João I (who married Princess Philippa of Lancaster here on 14 February 1387) and Baroque additions by Nicolau Nasoni in the 1730s, it houses an 800-kilogram 17th-century Silver Altar, the medieval statue of Porto's patroness Nossa Senhora de Vandoma, and 18th-century azulejo tile panels illustrating the Song of Songs, forming the centerpiece of Porto's UNESCO World Heritage historic district.

National Monument of Portugal (1910) and Core Monument of the UNESCO World Heritage Historic Centre of Porto (1996, Ref. 755)Terreiro da Sé, 4050-573 Porto, Historic Centre of Porto, Portugal

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The largest medieval cathedral in Portugal, crowning the highest point of the UNESCO World Heritage walled city of Évora in the Alentejo region beside the ancient Roman Temple. Begun in 1186 and consecrated in 1204 after the Christian reconquest of Évora, greatly expanded in Romanesque-Gothic style between 1280 and 1340 under King Dinis I, and enriched between 1718 and 1746 with a polychrome marble Baroque chancel by royal architect João Frederico Ludovice, it is celebrated for its asymmetric rose-granite towers, scale-tiled octagonal lantern tower (Zimbório), the 14th-century Portal of the Apostles, the 15th-century statue of the Pregnant Virgin (Nossa Senhora do Ó), and the 1497 blessing of Vasco da Gama's fleet banners.

National Monument of Portugal (1907), Minor Basilica (1929), and Centerpiece of the UNESCO World Heritage Historic Centre of Évora (1986, Ref. 361)Largo do Marquês de Marialva, 7000-809 Évora, Évora District, Alentejo, Portugal

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The only Romanesque cathedral from the Reconquista era in Portugal to have survived with its twelfth-century fortress architecture intact, rising on the hillside of the UNESCO World Heritage University of Coimbra above the Mondego River. Built between 1162 and 1184 under Portugal's first king, Afonso Henriques, and Bishop Miguel Salomão by French master architect Robert and his successors Bernardo and Soeiro, and the site of King Sancho I's coronation in 1185, it preserves 380 carved Romanesque-Mozarabic capitals, Portugal's earliest Gothic cloister (begun 1218), a 1498 to 1502 Flemish Flamboyant Gothic gilded altarpiece, and João de Ruão's 1530s Renaissance Porta Especiosa.

National Monument of Portugal (1910) and Component of the UNESCO World Heritage University of Coimbra - Alta and Sofia (2013, Ref. 1387)Largo da Sé Velha, 3000-383 Coimbra, Alta de Coimbra, Coimbra District, Portugal

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The oldest cathedral in Portugal and seat of the Primatial Archdiocese of Braga in the Minho region, consecrated on 28 August 1089 by Bishop Pedro de Braga half a century before the founding of the Kingdom of Portugal. Blending Romanesque portals, Gothic funerary chapels, a 1506 to 1509 Manueline chancel by João de Castilho, and twin 1737 to 1739 gilded Baroque pipe organs, it houses the tombs of Count Henry of Burgundy and Countess Teresa of León (parents of Portugal's first king, Afonso Henriques), the iron cross of the first Mass celebrated in Brazil in 1500, and the ancient liturgical Rite of Braga.

Oldest Cathedral and Primatial See of Portugal (Consecrated 1089), Minor Basilica (1905), and National Monument of Portugal (1910)Rua Dom Paio Mendes, 4700-424 Braga, Historic Centre of Braga, Minho, Portugal

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The iconic Baroque and Rococo granite church, brotherhood house, and 75.6-meter bell tower crowning the hilltop of central Porto, designed between 1732 and 1763 by Italian architect Nicolau Nasoni for the Brotherhood of the Clerics. Introducing Portugal's first elliptical (oval) church floor plan alongside a four-color marble chancel and a six-story campanile climbed by 240 steps to a 49-bell carillon and panoramic balcony, the monument is a centerpiece of the UNESCO World Heritage Historic Centre of Porto.

National Monument of Portugal (1910) and Landmark of the UNESCO World Heritage Historic Centre of Porto (1996, Ref. 755)Rua de São Filipe de Nery, 4050-546 Porto, Historic Centre of Porto, Portugal

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The premier Gothic church of Porto and supreme masterpiece of Portuguese Baroque gilded woodcarving (Talha Dourada), rising above the Ribeira waterfront of the Douro River in the UNESCO World Heritage Historic Centre of Porto. Founded as a Franciscan friary in 1245 and built in three-aisled Gothic granite between 1383 and 1425 under King João I, its entire interior was sheathed in the 17th and 18th centuries with carved chestnut and oak wood covered in more than 300 kilograms of Brazilian gold leaf, highlighted by the celebrated 1718 to 1721 polychrome Tree of Jesse sculpture and subterranean catacombs.

National Monument of Portugal (1910) and Masterpiece of the UNESCO World Heritage Historic Centre of Porto (1996, Ref. 755)Rua do Infante Dom Henrique, 4050-297 Porto, Ribeira, Historic Centre of Porto, Portugal

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The monumental Augustinian monastery and church overlooking eastern Alfama in Lisbon, founded in 1147 by King Afonso Henriques outside the Moorish city walls on the Crusader cemetery of the Siege of Lisbon and comprehensively rebuilt between 1582 and 1629 under King Philip I to the Mannerist designs of Filippo Terzi, Juan de Herrera, and Baltasar Álvares. Celebrated as the youthful monastic home where Saint Anthony of Lisbon studied from 1210 to 1212, it houses over 100,000 eighteenth-century azulejo tiles including the 38 panels of La Fontaine's Fables alongside the Royal Pantheon of the House of Braganza.

National Monument of Portugal (Monumento Nacional, 1910 and 1973), Royal Pantheon of the House of Braganza, and Pantheon of the Patriarchs of LisbonLargo de São Vicente, 1100-534 Lisbon, Alfama, Lisbon, Portugal

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The only fully preserved medieval pre-expulsion synagogue in Portugal, constructed between 1430 and 1460 in the historic Judiaria of Tomar under the patronage of Prince Henry the Navigator, Governor of the Order of Christ. Featuring a square vaulted prayer hall supported by four limestone columns symbolizing the Four Matriarchs of Israel, acoustic terracotta jars embedded in the corners, an excavated fifteenth-century ritual bath (mikveh), and medieval Hebrew epigraphic stones, it was rescued in 1923 by engineer Samuel Schwarz and serves today as the Abraham Zacuto Luso-Hebrew Museum.

National Monument of Portugal (Monumento Nacional, 29 July 1921) and the Abraham Zacuto Luso-Hebrew MuseumRua Dr. Joaquim Jacinto, 73, 2300-577 Tomar, Santarém District, Portugal

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A venerated Late Baroque and Pombaline Rococo sanctuary in the Alfama district of Lisbon erected directly over the noble twelfth-century family house where Fernando Martins de Bulhões (Saint Anthony of Lisbon and Padua, 1195 to 1231, Doctor of the Church) was born on 15 August 1195. Rebuilt between 1767 and 1812 after the 1755 earthquake to the designs of royal architect Mateus Vicente de Oliveira and funded in part by pennies collected by the children of Lisbon, it preserves the medieval subterranean Crypt of the Birthroom visited by Pope John Paul II in 1982.

National Monument of Portugal (Monumento Nacional, 1 June 1920) and Municipal Shrine of the City of LisbonLargo de Santo António da Sé, 22-24, 1100-500 Lisbon, Alfama, Lisbon, Portugal

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The historic mother church of the Society of Jesus in Portugal and the earliest Jesuit church in the Lusophone world, founded upon a 1506 plague shrine in Lisbon's Bairro Alto and rebuilt between 1565 and 1587 by Afonso Álvares and Filippo Terzi as a pioneering single-nave auditorium church with an illusionistic painted wooden ceiling. Behind its austere whitewashed facade, which survived the 1755 earthquake intact, the interior dazzles with Baroque gilded woodcarving, signed 1584 azulejos by Francisco de Matos, two monumental reliquary altars, and the eighteenth-century Chapel of Saint John the Baptist crafted in Rome by Luigi Vanvitelli and Nicola Salvi out of lapis lazuli, amethyst, and micro-mosaics.

National Monument of Portugal (Monumento Nacional, 16 June 1910) and Earliest Jesuit Church in the Portuguese-Speaking WorldLargo Trindade Coelho, 1200-470 Lisbon, Bairro Alto, Lisbon, Portugal

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The monumental National Sanctuary of the Catholic Church in Portugal rising 110 meters atop the 133-meter cliff of Alto do Pragal in Almada on the southern bank of the Tagus estuary opposite Lisbon. Conceived in 1934 by Cardinal Patriarch Manuel Gonçalves Cerejeira after visiting Rio de Janeiro and vowed by the Portuguese Bishops at Fátima on 20 April 1940 in thanksgiving for peace during World War II, the monument was inaugurated on Pentecost Sunday, 17 May 1959, combining an 82-meter four-pillared pedestal by architect António Lino with a 28-meter statue of Christ the King by sculptor Francisco Franco de Sousa.

National Sanctuary of the Catholic Church in Portugal and Monument of Public InterestAlto do Pragal, Avenida do Cristo Rei, 2800-058 Almada, Setúbal District, Lisbon Metropolitan Area, Portugal

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The second largest Marian pilgrimage sanctuary in Portugal after Fátima, crowning the 566-meter summit of Mount Sameiro east of the ancient primatial city of Braga. Founded on 14 June 1863 by Father Martinho António Pereira da Silva as Portugal's first monument to the 1854 Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, the Neoclassical granite basilica (built 1890 to 1953 and elevated to a Minor Basilica by Pope Paul VI in 1964) enshrines an 1878 Roman statue by Eugenio Maccagnani blessed by Pope Leo XIII, solemnly crowned with a 2.5-kilogram gold and diamond crown on 12 June 1904, and honored with the papal Golden Rose in 2004.

Minor Basilica (designated in 1964 by Pope Paul VI), Second Largest Marian Shrine in Portugal, and Recipient of the Papal Golden Rose (2004)Avenida Nossa Senhora do Sameiro, 4715-616 Espinho, Braga, Braga District, Portugal

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The tranquil pastoral landscape of olive and holm oak groves located two kilometers south of the Cova da Iria esplanade in Fátima, preserving the ancestral village of Aljustrel where Venerable Lúcia dos Santos (1907 to 2005) and Saints Francisco (1908 to 1919) and Jacinta Marto (1910 to 1920) were born, the Well of Arneiro and the rock outcropping of Loca do Cabeço where the Angel of Peace appeared three times in 1916, the hill of Valinhos where Our Lady appeared on 19 August 1917, and the Hungarian Way of the Cross built between 1959 and 1964.

Monument of Public Interest of Portugal and Foundational Sacred Precinct of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of FátimaCaminho dos Pastorinhos, Valinhos and Aljustrel, 2495-300 Fátima, Ourém, Santarém District, Portugal

Photo: Terry Kearney from liverpool, merseyside, CC0, Wikimedia Commons