Portel

Portel stands beneath its castle on a spur of the Serra de Portel, between Évora and Beja. Afonso III authorized João de Aboim to build the fortress in 1261, and the nobleman granted a charter to its settlers the following year. During the crisis of 1383–1385, the governor favored Castile, but a local cleric opened the town gates to Nuno Álvares Pereira's forces in 1384. Portel later passed to the house of Braganza, whose dukes remodeled the castle as a palace in the early sixteenth century.