Guarda

Guarda rises high above the lands of Beira Alta, near the Serra da Estrela and the frontier with Castile. Sancho I founded the city in 1199 in a position chosen for its defensibility and transferred the bishopric from Idanha. Its walls and castle guarded a town that also became a religious center. The cathedral begun in the reign of John I was enlarged over the following century. Guarda's Jewish quarter was already important in the thirteenth century, and the community received newcomers expelled from Spain in 1492. Its merchants and households contributed to the life of a border city whose fortunes were shaped by both defense and exchange.