The Lanhoso Castle, which is at the northern entrance to the town of Póvoa de Lanhoso, is one of the most impressive castles in Portugal and a very popular place for tourists to visit in the area. It is on top of the Monte do Pilar, which is the biggest single piece of granite in the country. It is near where the basins of the rivers Ave and Cávado meet. Within its fortifications, a sixteenth-century sanctuary was constructed utilising the original walls’ stone. On the half-slope, next to the entrance, are the ruins of an ancient Romanized hamlet.
Archaeological evidence suggests that during the Chalcolithic period, people lived at the base of the hill where the castle now stands.
After the Romans took over the Iberian Peninsula, they built a military tower near the road that connected Bracara Augusta (now Braga), Aquae Flaviae (now Chaves), and Astorga to the south of the river Cávado.
Built on top of Monte do Pilar, the country’s biggest granite monolith, and isolating the Ave and Cávado river basins, a 17th-century sanctuary was constructed inside its walls, utilizing the original stone from the ancient walls. At the entrance, halfway up the hill, are the ruins of an old Roman castro. According to legend, Countess Teresa de Leão, the mother of King Afonso Henriques (1112-1185), sought sanctuary twice in this castle.
The mediaeval fortress
Between the tenth and eleventh centuries, the historic Roman fortress was razed to the ground.
Archbishop D. Pedro I of Braga (1071–1091) had the castle built according to the earliest inscription on a Portuguese castle’s ashlar, which was next to the foundations and the perimeter of the first fortification.
DNA sought refuge in this defense. Teresa de Leo, widow of Count D. Henrique (1093–1112) and mother of D. Afonso Henriques, was assaulted by D. Urraca, a member of the armies of the Queen of León. Here, surrounded by D. Urraca’s (1121) warriors, D. Teresa was able to negotiate the Treaty of Lanhoso, which allowed her to save her county’s leadership. Later, according to tradition, D. Teresa returned there after the Battle of São Mamede (1128), which is contested by current historians, who assert that she died in Galicia (1130).
In any event, the castle was renovated between the end of the 12th century and the beginning of the 13th century, when the keep was constructed. At the time, the castle was known as the land’s head, emphasising its regional prominence.
In this context, the castle was the site of a terrible passion crime in the 13th century: its mayor, D. Rui Gonçalves de Pereira, the great-great-grandfather of Constable D. Nuno lvares Pereira, who was outside the castle upon learning of his wife’s marital infidelity, Inês Sanches, who was in love with a friar from the monastery of Bouro, returned and, closing the doors, ordered the citadel set on fire. causing the death of the unfaithful woman and her lover, as well as the servants, who implicated as accomplices for not having reported the fact. Old reports say that no one escaped the fire alive, not even domestic animals.
From the twentieth century until the present
The castle was designated a national monument by a decree dated June 23, 1910. In 1938, the Directorate-General for National Buildings and Monuments (DGEMN) began consolidating and restoring the castle. This included archaeological prospecting, cleaning, rebuilding the two turrets on either side of the entrance gate, the arch of that gate, and parts of the walls, as well as building a road to the castle and making improvements to the Sanctuary of Nossa Senhora do Pilar. The same organ launched further campaigns in 1958–1959, 1973, and 1975–1976. When the castle was reopened to the public in 1996, the City Council, with help from the Adere-Lanhoso Association, cleaned and strengthened the structures and remodeled the inside floors of the tower.
Currently, visitors may visit the sanctuaries of Nossa Senhora do Pilar and Castro de Lanhoso in addition to the medieval castle, which has a modest museum with artifacts from the neighboring castro.
At a maximum elevation of 385 metres above sea level, the castle has an irregular hexagonal plan in Romanesque and Gothic style breaking into its walls to the south, next to the Torre de Menagem, the entrance gate, in a broken arch flanked by two crenellated quadrangular turrets. The wall is traversed by a parapet protected by a parapet topped by pyramidal battlements, some of which have openings with manholes.
At the highest level of the land, to the east, the Menagem Tower stands out, with a quadrangular plan built from the primitive Roman foundations (three equidistant turrets). Its walls, which rise to about ten metres in height, exceed one metre in thickness. A stone staircase provides communication between the tower door in a broken arch, opened three metres from the ground, and the main square, with a quadrangular area of approximately 500 square meters, where the mayor’s house and other dependencies were built, including the cistern.
The outside of the complex is protected by a barbican with an elliptical shape. The north entrance gate is reached by a staircase carved into the rock and is flanked by a turret with crenellations. A second turret rises to the east.
The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Pilar
As the Modern Era began, the kingdom’s borders got closer together, and the fortress slowly lost its strategic value and fell into ruin.
At the end of the 17th century, a wealthy Porto merchant named André da Silva Machado decided to build a copy of the Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Braga. This sped up the process.
So that he could do this, he got permission to tear down the old castle and use the stones to build a shrine to Nossa Senhora do Pilar (1680).
So began the destruction of part of the barbican and its walls, as well as the building of the Sanctuary of Nossa Senhora do Pilar, which is a church, a staircase, and chapels for pilgrims.
In 1724, work on the sanctuary continued, while Craesbeeck (Resurrected Memories of the Province of Between Douro and Minho, 1726) described the castle’s state of ruin. This view was supported by the rector, Paulo Antunes Alonso (Parochial Memories, 1758), who stated that only the Torre de Menagem remained, whose southwest corner had been damaged by lightning.
