A seafront fortress above the old town

Kings and friars sheltered behind cannon-proof walls

You're standing by the walls of the Citadel of Cascais, a fortress that has watched over this harbor since 1488. The walls are thick, built to turn away cannon fire from the sea. Inside them, a palace and a chapel once housed Portuguese kings when they came to spend the summer by the water.

Ninety feet away stands the Igreja de Nossa Senhora da Assunção, the town's mother church, built on the site of an old Visigoth burial ground. A 1572 engraving shows it standing just outside the town walls, close enough to the sea that waves once nearly reached its door.

The Cascais coast has not always been calm. In 1531, an earthquake and a tsunami on the Tagus River killed an estimated 30,000 people and flattened 1,500 houses. Lisbon shook again in 1551, killing 2,000. In 1807, a smaller quake struck the Lisbon area and killed 11 people.

Behind the citadel's walls, the palace chapel is dedicated to Nossa Senhora da Vitória, Our Lady of Victory. Portuguese kings and their families used the citadel as a summer retreat for generations, staying inside walls built to stop cannon fire rather than host dinners.

In 1151, an earthquake struck Lisbon and killed 1,000 people.

A short walk from the ramparts, the convent of Nossa Senhora da Piedade was going up at the same time. Work started in 1594, paid for by Dom António de Castro, the Lord of Cascais and Count of Monsanto. Carmelite friars moved in before it was even finished, and by 1641 it held Portugal's first college of philosophy. In 1673, the painter Josefa de Óbidos made several works for the convent on the life of Saint Teresa of Ávila. Those same years, she was also painting for the mother church by the citadel gate, a Salvator Mundi and scenes of Saint Teresa's visions and ecstasies that still hang there today.

The earthquake that struck Lisbon on November 1, 1755, did more damage to this stretch of coast than any quake before it. It tore into the mother church's façade and upper choir, putting the building out of use. The Carmelite convent up the hill was badly damaged too. Worship at the mother church moved temporarily to a nearby chapel while repairs dragged on.

The earthquake also destroyed a second church near the old town entrance, the Church of the Resurrection. Afterward, the two parishes merged into one, and the surviving church took both names: Our Lady of the Assumption and the Resurrection.

A lesser earthquake hit the Lisbon area again in 1807, killing 11 people along this coast.

In 1834, Portugal dissolved its monasteries. The Carmelite convent above the citadel was abandoned and left to fall apart. Its paintings by Josefa de Óbidos were carried down to the mother church by the citadel gate, where they still hang. The state sold the ruined convent property in 1864.

A decade later, the Viscount of Gandarinha bought the old convent land and built a summer house on it. By then the royal family had taken to spending part of each summer in the town, and Portuguese nobility followed them, wanting to be close to the king. The area still carries the Viscount's name, Gandarinha, on the apartment block that stands behind the old convent buildings today.

Luís I of Portugal died at the citadel in 1889. He had reigned for 28 years and was known as much for painting and music as for ruling, and the foundation that now runs the Cascais Cultural Centre was later named after him.

By 1900, the old convent property had passed to the Espírito Santo family, who renovated the chapel and kept the summer house standing. The citadel itself, meanwhile, remained in military use, its guns long since obsolete but its walls still intact above the harbor.

Domingos Joaquim da Silva died at São João do Estoril in 1936, a few minutes' walk down the coast from where you stand.

Andor Hubay-Cebrián died at Estoril in 1971. Eight years later, in 1979, Miguel António do Carmo de Noronha de Paiva Couceiro died at the citadel.

After the Carnation Revolution of April 25, 1974, overthrew Portugal's dictatorship, the state seized the assets of Banco Espírito Santo and the family that had owned the old convent grounds. The family's ties to the former regime had run deep. For a time the buildings housed Portuguese families returning from the country's former African colonies, people with nowhere else to go. In 1977, the government handed the property to the town of Cascais, and the chapel passed to the local parish.

Archaeologists dug through the old convent grounds between 1992 and 1997, turning up what lay beneath centuries of rebuilding. Restoration work began in 1994 and ran for years afterward.

The Cultural Centre opened on May 15, 2000, built around the old convent's surviving walls and the former chapel. The chapel itself became a 144-seat hall for talks and recitals. Exhibition rooms spread across three floors, and a restaurant opened in the old courtyard at its center.

On May 15, 2010, a sculpture of Pope John Paul II by the artist Alves André was unveiled in the square beside the mother church. It stands close to where the church's damaged towers were folded back into its rebuilt façade after the 1755 quake.

Today you can walk the citadel's ramparts above the harbor, step into the mother church to see Josefa de Óbidos's paintings carried down from the ruined convent, and sit in the Cultural Centre's courtyard where Carmelite friars once studied philosophy. Cascais Marina stretches along the shore just past the citadel walls, built on the same stretch of coast the old fortress was raised to defend.