Tomar

Tomar is a city and municipality in the Santarém district, situated on the Nabão river in central Portugal. It is best known as the seat of the Knights Templar in Portugal and later the Order of Christ, whose Convento de Cristo dominates a forested hilltop above the city. The complex, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is one of the most significant examples of medieval religious and military architecture in Portugal.

The heart of the convent is the Charola, a twelve-sided Templar rotunda church dating to the twelfth century, modelled on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The convent’s Chapter House window, carved in the Manueline style around 1510, is widely considered the most elaborate piece of stone carving in Portugal, with an extraordinary programme of maritime and naturalistic decoration.

The city below the hill has a traditional character with a pedestrianised centre, the Nabão flowing through it, and a grid plan partly attributable to the Order of Christ’s systematic development of the settlement.