Castle of Almeida

The lands of Almeida were taken from the Moors in 1039 by Ferdinand I of León and Castile, then passed between León, Moorish and Portucalense forces until 1190, when Pio Guterres, called the Almeidão, reconquered them and gave the village its name. By 1217 the castle is recorded as one of several strong points guarding the Côa border. King Dinis granted a foral on 8 November 1296 and ordered castle and walls rebuilt; a clause of the 1373 peace treaty ceded castle and lands to Castile for three years. John I took Almeida in 1386 with the help of Portuguese nobles in Castile, after its alcalde had sworn fealty to D. Beatriz in the succession crisis of 1383. Manuel I had the walls enlarged, the work finished in 1508; it is one of the 56 border strongholds drawn for Duarte d'Armas's Book of Fortresses of 1509-10.

Between 1580 and 1640 the defences began to fall into ruin. After John IV restored the Portuguese crown on 1 December 1640, the first military governor of Beira, D. Álvaro de Abranches da Câmara, ordered modern fortifications; by January 1641 the work was in rudimentary progress and amounted to trenches, and by November the place had become a military square. The twelve-pointed bastioned fortress enclosing the older medieval castle was begun in 1641 to David Álvares's design, in the Vaubanesque manner. Spanish forces attacked the town without success in 1645, and were repelled from the fort on 2 July 1663. In 1661, by the Count of Mesquitela's account, the square was still not fully encircled and had no moat. An explosion in the castle in 1695 killed 40 people and damaged nearby houses.

Between 1702 and 1714, during the War of the Spanish Succession, Almeida began to serve as a garrison and base of operations for Beira; the Lisbon earthquake of 1 November 1755 damaged its walls and destroyed the infantry barracks, and by March 1762 the fortress had largely reached its present dimensions.

Portugal declared war on France and Spain on 18 May 1762; Spain answered on 15 June. The southern arm of the Spanish offensive crossed from Ciudad Rodrigo and besieged Almeida for nine days, from 16 to 25 August 1762, under the Count of Aranda. The Portuguese capitulated on the 25th; the Spanish advance west towards Porto then stalled against 8,000 newly arrived British troops and the Battle of Valencia de Alcántara. Almeida, garrisoned by the Spanish, remained the only major fortress in Spanish hands at the war's end. It was given back to Portugal on 11 April 1763, Field Marshal Francisco Maclean accepting the Spanish surrender in a settlement that returned Cuba and the Philippines to Spain. The Count of Lippe re-examined the batteries on 9 May 1764.

The first French invasion, under Jean-Andoche Junot, began on 20 November 1807 and took the fortress without resistance on 13 January 1808. André Masséna opened the third invasion on 15 August 1810, bombarding a fortress held by the British brigadier general William Cox.

On 26 August a chance shell hit ignited the powder magazine: 4,000 prepared charges, 68,000 kilograms of black powder and a million musket cartridges. The blast killed 600 defenders, wounded 300 and razed the medieval castle to the ground. Unable to answer the French guns without powder, Cox capitulated the next day with the survivors and 100 cannon.

On 7 May 1811 Masséna ordered the fortress destroyed so that Anglo-Portuguese forces could not use it; on 10 May the French withdrew through the bastion of São João de Deus, wrecking the artillery as they went, and the Alliance took the place back. On 3 March 1817 William Carr Beresford ordered work on the fort stopped and the fortification mined.

In 1828 the municipal authority sided with D. Miguel, the garrison with D. Pedro; Miguelist forces encircled the fortress by June and it surrendered on 16 July, their troops remaining until 18 April 1834. During the Liberal Wars of 1832-1834 the casemates held 1,500 political prisoners. On 27 August 1887 Almeida was again classified a first-class fortification. In September 1893 it was partly demolished to improve access, and the Superior Commission for War declassified it on 28 June 1895.

The fortress ceased military duties for good in 1927 and was classified a National Monument by decree of 3 February 1928. A military museum opened at the Gate of Cruz in 1980; custody passed to the Centro Region Directorate for Culture on 20 December 2007, and in August 2009 the Historical-Military Museum of Almeida opened in the old casemates.