Oct 31 - Castelo de Vide, Portugal

This day was 'visit the Castles' day. We had seen many castles on the road in southern Spain but hadn't gone to any of them. Today was different.

Castelo de Vide is a town of about 3500 people. It is located on a mountain ridge near the Spanish border (there were times that Spanish Kings invaded Portugal and times when Portuguese Kings invaded Spain). It is about 3000' high and, unlike most of the rest of Portugal, they sometimes get snow in the winter (its latitude is 39N, about the same as Baltimore).  In the first image, George is on a ledge overlooking  olive groves and behind those is another ridge that is in Spain. To the north (George's right) is the drainage basin of the Tagus which flows to the Atlantic at Lisbon.



There is a castle (castelo) in castelo de vide. On the way to the castle was a wooden knight guarding a passageway (second image). George and I have him surrounded. Maybe he said "Nee"*.

We kept walking up slopes, steps and so forth. About 100' higher (third image), George is on another ledge overlooking a valley that is, I think, in Portugal protected from Spain by the castle.

Another 60 or so feet higher and George is at the top of the castle rampart (fourth image). Although this castle was built by the Christian Portuguese sometime in the 13th century to guard against attack by Christian Spaniards, they use the Moorish scallop design at the top of the wall, not because they liked the Moors but because they thought it would be useful as soldiers can hide themselves and their equipment behind one until they are ready to fire.

There is a Jewish Quarter in this city also.

The fifth and sixth images are from alentejo-property.com. I didn't take images of this for some reason.


They show the front doors and side door of a 14th century synagogue. It is the oldest known and preserved synagogue in Portugal. The Jewish quarter in this town was established early in the 15th century.  The discussion in the brochures we got on this town and the various internet sites on the town have a number of confusing statements.

I'm not sure if this Jewish quarter was established to house refugees from the Spanish pogroms beginning in 1391 or whether it was to organize the town's indigenous Jews or whether it was part of what today would be called a planned community.

The same site that had the synagogue images also had a good image of the city as seen from the air.

The image shows pretty clearly that the castle is at the top of the hill and the city grew down hill. 

* This a reference to a famous scene in the Movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"