Castle of Santa Maria da Feira

When Alfonso III of León created the administrative and military district he called the Terra de Santa Maria in 868, he rested its defence on the fortress already standing at Civitas Sanctae Mariae, a forward base against the Arab south for many years.

Twice in the year 1000 the armies of Al-Mansur took the castle and destroyed the local population, and Christian forces retook it each time. Attacks continued under Bermudo III of León, and the first documentary reference to a fortification here is the Chronica Gothorum, which records his victory over a Moorish chief in the lands of the Castle of Santa Maria. The lower part of the keep, an alcáçova, probably dates from that period.

The County of Portugal granted to Henry in 1095 included this castle along with Guimarães, Faria and Neiva. After his death the Galician Fernão Peres de Trava rose to power over his widow Teresa, and the discontented lords south of the Minho gathered around the young Afonso Henriques. Much of that combining took place in the lands and castle of Santa Maria under the noble Ermígio Moniz, which is why the castle is said to be the true cradle of Portuguese independence.

Pero Gonçalves de Marnel, governor of Santa Maria da Feira and alcaide of the castle, had himself been replaced at Coimbra by Fernando Pérez; seeing his wealth and possessions threatened by Galician power in the county, he aligned himself and his castle with Afonso Henriques at São Mamede, where the queen's Galician-backed forces were beaten on 13 June 1128 — in part, it is held, because of what had been arranged at the castle.

In his will of 1188 Sancho I named this the chief of five castles set aside as a refuge for his widowed queen and the infantas, and in 1282 Dinis I included it among the twelve castles assured as arras to Queen Isabel. It was later seized by the Infante Afonso in his war against his father, and at the peace the queen brokered in 1322 it was made over to Afonso on his oath of homage. Gonçalo Garcia de Figueiredo was alcaide in 1357, and the walls were finally built during the 14th century.

On 10 September 1372 Ferdinand I gave the lands of Santa Maria and their castle to João Afonso Telo de Meneses, Count of Barcelos, who installed Martim Correia as alcaide. When the crisis of 1383–1385 broke the count took the side of Castile and the alcaide followed him. In 1385 Gonçalo Vasques Coutinho, alcaide of Penedono, took the castle with men and supplies from Porto and handed it to John I, who on 8 April granted it to Álvaro Pereira, cousin of the Constable Nuno Álvares Pereira.

In 1448 the castle was given to Fernão Pereira under an obligation to rebuild it, work finished only in the second half of the 15th century. Under the Pereiras it became a palatial residence, and the watchtowers, conical turrets and reinforced defences that fix its character belong to this period, as do the late-15th-century adaptations to gunpowder artillery.

The fourth Count of Feira, Diogo Forjaz, had the clock tower built in the era of 1562, recorded by an inscription over the barbican. The counts' palace was completed inside the walls during the 17th century and later demolished; the hexagonal Baroque chapel of Nossa Senhora da Encarnação, raised for the Countess Joana Forjaz Pereira de Meneses e Silva over an older chapel of the same dedication, was inaugurated in 1656.

The line of the Counts of Feira was extinguished in 1700 and the property passed to the Casa do Infantado in 1708. A violent fire devastated the building on 15 January 1722 and left it abandoned and ruinous. After the civil war of 1828–1834 General Francisco Xavier da Silva Pereira bought the ruins at public auction; members of the royal family visited in 1852, and the town council had the old castle well cleared in 1887.

A public subscription early in the 20th century paid for repairs and a guard for the ruins, the Public Works directorate carrying out the first of them in 1907, Manuel II visited the next year, and a conservation commission followed in 1909. The castle was classified a National Monument by decree of 16 June 1910. Visits were charged for from 1927. The national monuments directorate rebuilt the parapets and merlons in 1935 and worked on the walls, cistern, pavements and chapel roof in 1939–1944. A new access opened in 1950 and the exterior illumination was inaugurated on 13 January 1963.

The castle is owned by the municipality and looked after by the Comissão de Vigilância do Castelo, which runs the tours.