Convent of Christ

Convent of Christ tickets: which one to buy

One ticket covers the whole complex, castle walls included, and it is inexpensive; the combined pass sold with the monasteries of Batalha and Alcobaca saves about a third if you are touring central Portugal. Audio guides are rented at the entrance. Guided tours of an hour explain the Templar and Order of Christ history and cost two or three times the entry, worth it here because the site is large, the chronology confusing and the signage minimal.

Day trips from Lisbon, ninety minutes each way, usually pair Tomar with Fatima and sometimes with Almourol castle on its island in the Tagus; those are long days with about two hours on site, which is enough for the church and the main cloisters but not for the walls and the aqueduct. Driving gives you the freedom to stay past four, when the coaches leave and the light on the Manueline window is at its best. Parking is at the top of the hill, a short walk from the gate.

Visiting Convent of Christ: what to see

The Templars founded the castle in 1160 and built the round church, the charola, modelled on the Holy Sepulchre and the Dome of the Rock: an octagonal core inside a sixteen-sided drum, painted and gilded in the sixteenth century, where knights are said to have heard mass on horseback. When the order was dissolved in 1312, Portugal reinvented it as the Order of Christ, whose Grand Master Prince Henry the Navigator used its wealth to fund voyages down the African coast.

Manuel I extended the church westwards, and on the outside of that extension is the chapter house window, the most famous piece of Manueline carving in Portugal: ropes, cork floats, seaweed, coral and the cross of the order, tangled into stone. Eight cloisters survive, from the modest Templar ones to the severe Renaissance Main Cloister with its spiral stair. An aqueduct six kilometres long brought water to the convent and still marches across the valley.

Convent of Christ opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily, from morning to early evening in summer and closing an hour earlier from October to May, with last admission half an hour before. Tomar is small and quiet, and the site is rarely crowded outside the middle of the day when the Lisbon coaches call. Summer is hot on the hill with little shade in the cloisters. The chapter house window faces west and photographs best in the afternoon.

In July of even-numbered years the town holds the Festa dos Tabuleiros, when women carry towers of bread and flowers through the streets, and accommodation vanishes for a week. Dress code is relaxed but the charola is a church. Allow two hours for the convent, three with the castle walls and the gardens, and add twenty minutes for the aqueduct viewpoint on the road out of town. The Templar church alone deserves half your time. The gardens below the convent are free and give the best view of the aqueduct arches marching in from the hills.