A Christian army penned Lisbon in for seventeen weeks, thirty paces from where you are standing.
Last reviewed 21 September 2026 · A three-minute read · 6379 BC–2013
The short answer
Igreja de Santa Luzia in Lisbon stands on ground just below São Jorge Castle, where a Christian army besieged the Moorish city for seventeen weeks in 1147 until hunger forced its surrender. The captured city's mosque was replaced that same year by Lisbon Cathedral, and the hill above went on to house Portugal's kings for over three centuries.
July to October 1147
An army starved Lisbon into surrender over seventeen weeks
On July 1, 1147, an army camped on the hill above you and did not move for seventeen weeks. Below them lay Lisbon, a walled Muslim city holding sixty thousand families, swollen further by refugees fleeing the fighting in nearby Santarém. Inside the walls, one account put the fighting men at 154,000, not counting women and children.
The army outside was not supposed to be there at all. In May 1147, a fleet of English, Flemish and German crusaders sailed out of Dartmouth, England, headed for the Holy Land. A storm forced them ashore at Porto instead. There they met Afonso I of Portugal. He had declared himself king eight years earlier. He needed a city to make his kingship real. He offered them a deal: help him take Lisbon, and they could keep whatever they could carry, plus ransom money for prisoners. They agreed.
The Siege of Lisbon dragged into autumn. No relief came for the city. Hunger did what the crusaders' siege engines could not, and by late October the defenders had nothing left to hold with.
On October 24, Lisbon's rulers gave up the city, worn down by hunger rather than broken by force. The chronicler writing at the time said plainly that the inhabitants were "despoiled and the city cleansed." Most of the crusaders stayed and settled in the city they had just starved into submission. Afonso kept his prize. Lisbon never fell back under Muslim rule again, and in 1255 it became the capital of the kingdom he had built on that hunger.
The city surrendered on October 24, four months after the first tents went up.
1147, that same year
A cathedral rose on the mosque it replaced
The city fell in October. Its mosque did not survive the winter. Where Lisbon's Muslim community had prayed for four centuries, the new king's men began raising a cathedral. They built it on the same foundations, on the same ground. Lisbon Cathedral rose that year as the conquest's clearest signature: not just a captured city, but a captured skyline. The building standing thirty paces from you today, patched and rebuilt after earthquakes and centuries of use, still sits where the mosque once stood.
The mosque did not outlast the year the city fell.
1291 to 1357
A king and queen were entombed inside the conquest
The dynasty that inherited Afonso's conquest ended up entombed inside it. Afonso IV of Portugal, king of Portugal, died in 1357. He was buried in the cathedral built on the captured mosque. This was a little over 300 feet from where the mosque itself once stood. His queen, Beatrice of Castile, was laid beside him the same year. Their tombs sit inside the building that was itself a war trophy two centuries earlier. The conquest had become furniture. A king and queen now slept inside the proof of what their ancestor had taken.
Not everything on this hill survived that long. Something else, standing for five hundred years, would not survive an afternoon.
13th century to 1835
An earthquake finished what centuries of use could not
The Convento da Santíssima Trindade went up in the mid-1200s for the Trinitarian order. It stood on this parish for five centuries. Then the ground itself turned on it. The 1755 earthquake that flattened much of Lisbon left the convent in ruins. Its walls were too damaged to save. Eighty years later, in 1835, workers tore down what remained. They cut a new street, Rua Nova da Trindade, straight through the site. Nothing that army or siege could do to this hill matched what one morning in 1755 managed in minutes.
1147 to early 1500s
The hill that starved the city housed its conquerors
The fortress that watched over the starving city below became the seat of the men who starved it. São Jorge Castle, on the high ground above where the siege camp once stood, became the royal residence of Portugal's kings after 1147. It held that role for more than three centuries. Then Manuel I moved the court down toward the river in the early 1500s. For all that time, the hill that broke Lisbon by hunger was where its conquerors slept, ruled, and counted what they had won.
The cathedral, the castle, and the tombs still sit where the siege put them, on a hill that has not changed hands since.
The castle hill above you was fortified continuously from the Iron Age through Phoenician, Roman, and Moorish occupation, finally taken by Christian forces in 1147.
From July to October 1147, Christian forces and passing crusaders surrounded the Moorish-held city just below the castle hill, one of the few outright victories of the Second Crusade.
The 16th-century Casa dos Bicos, its facade cut into stone spikes, survived the 1755 earthquake and now houses the José Saramago Foundation, honoring Portugal's Nobel laureate in literature.
The Cadeia do Aljube, near the Sé, held people convicted by the Church courts until 1820, then women accused of crimes, and later, under the Estado Novo dictatorship, political prisoners until 1965.
The Braganza monarchs, including João V, Carlos I, and Manuel II, were buried in the royal pantheon of the Monastery of São Vicente de Fora, a short walk northeast.
The 13th-century Convento da Santíssima Trindade was left in ruins by the 1755 Lisbon earthquake and finally cleared away in 1835 to cut a new street through it.
João Glama Ströberle painted the devastation of the 1755 earthquake in a canvas made the following year, a firsthand record of the disaster that flattened much of the city around this hill.
Rua Norberto de Araújo, right by where you stand, was named in 1956 for the journalist and Lisbon chronicler whose own writings on these streets are still quoted by the city today.
Thirty paces from the church, a Christian army besieging Lisbon camped for seventeen weeks from July to October 1147, until hunger forced the walled Muslim city to surrender on October 24.
What was here before Lisbon Cathedral was built?
A mosque stood on the ground where Lisbon Cathedral now stands. It did not survive the winter after the city fell in October 1147, and the cathedral was raised on the same foundations that same year.
Who is buried in Lisbon Cathedral near this site?
Afonso IV, king of Portugal, was buried there in 1357, alongside his queen, Beatrice of Castile, roughly 300 feet from where the original mosque had stood.
What happened to the convent near this church?
The Convento da Santíssima Trindade, built in the mid-1200s, was left in ruins by the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. Its remains were demolished in 1835 and a new street, Rua Nova da Trindade, was cut through the site.
Where did Portugal's kings live after the 1147 siege?
Portugal's kings made São Jorge Castle, on the high ground above the old siege camp, their royal residence from 1147 until Manuel I moved the court toward the river in the early 1500s.
