Santarém

Santarém stands on a bluff above the Tagus, the old capital of the Ribatejo. The Romans called it Scallabis, and under Muslim rule, as Shantarin, it became a cultural centre. On 15 March 1147 Afonso Henriques took it by a night attack, when a few men climbed the walls and opened the gates, a chronicle of the conquest tells the exploit. For a time Santarém, the town of Saint Irene, the martyr who gave it its name, was one of the most important in Portugal.

Medieval kings came often to its royal palace, and many sessions of the Cortes, the Portuguese assembly, were held here. Ferdinand I loved the town and chose to be buried in the Convent of São Francisco. The expedition against Ceuta in 1415 was planned in the palace of Santarém. Pedro de Meneses, Ceuta's first governor, lies in a Gothic tomb in the Church of Graça, and in the same church rests Pedro Álvares Cabral, who reached Brazil in 1500. As the court drifted toward coastal Lisbon, Santarém lost its importance, and earthquakes damaged it in 1531 and 1755.