Friday 4 September 2026 – We arrived (exUberantly?) in Tomar shortly after midday at our very posh hotel.

It’s the Hotel dos Templarios. Yes, here we are in Tomar, Knights Templar GHQ. Just on entering the hotel, the Templar symbols abound.

So, before anything else, here’s a bit of background on the city of Tomar and the Knights Templar, a powerful medieval military religious order founded in 1118 to protect Christian pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land.

Tomar was founded in 1160 by Gualdim Pais, a crusader knight and Grand Master of the Knights Templar in Portugal, on land granted to the Order by King Afonso Henriques as a reward for their role in the Reconquista. Pais built the town’s castle and fortress on a hill above the Nabão river, designed to guard the frontier and the road to Lisbon against Moorish incursions.

After the Knights Templar were suppressed across Europe in the early 14th century (Pope Clement V dissolved the order in 1312, under pressure from Philip IV of France), Portugal’s King Dinis took a different path. Rather than persecute the Templars as other monarchs did, he negotiated with the papacy to have their assets and personnel transferred into a new Portuguese order, the Order of Christ, founded in 1319 with its headquarters at Tomar — effectively the Templars continuing under a new name and royal control.

The Order of Christ was extraordinarily wealthy, and in the 15th century that wealth (and the order’s crusading, seafaring ethos) fused directly with Portuguese exploration. Henry the Navigator served as governor of the Order of Christ, and its funds helped finance the voyages that opened up the African coast and beyond.

Quite a big deal for the history of the area, then.

Quite a big deal for the subsequent marketing folk to exploit, too, as witness the entrance to the hotel. However, not everything is to do with the Knights Templar, as we saw for ourselves after a quick chat with the hotel reception established that it would be a couple of hours before a room became available for us. The sun was (just) over the yardarm by this stage, but we didn’t fancy sitting in the bar (ooh, you have changed – Ed) and it was too early for lunch, so there was nothing for it but to go for a walk. Obviously.

On the drive over, with the sun behind the clouds and the car’s temperature gauge showing 28°C, I’d begun to worry that we were overreacting to the forecast hot weather; and when we walked out of the hotel, it was hot but not intolerable. Jane had (of course) found something for us to do to pass the time, which involved visiting a hermitage. Unfortunately, said hermitage was uphill from us.

See that little white spire at the top of the picture? Yup, that’s where we had to get to. It’s the Ermida de Nossa Senhora da Piedade, and it’s at the top of the Escadórios de Nossa Senhora da Piedade.

There are reportedly 292 steps up to the top, and I walked up it. Twice. (For reasons why, read on).

It’s an interestingly architected staircase, with several flights interspersed with landings, each of which has a circing wall around it.

As you climb, you get a great view across a valley to the city’s main tourist attraction religious institution, the Convent of Christ and the castle.

More on that in a subsequent post.

At the top is the Hermitage

originally built in the 14th century and restored in the 17th. Inside, it’s quite simple

with a barrel roof over the altar.

The staircase was built in 1846 and finished with trees planted either side ten years later. Jane took this shot down the stairs which gives a good view of how it works.

Jane also told me that she had seen what she thought might have been action camera footage of someone riding down the stair case on a bicycle, and suggested that I could try a hyperlapse. This sounded fun, and I had my Osmo stabilised camera with me, so I tried it.

It was rubbish.

For some reason the camera kept drifting off pointing straight down the stairs, making me wish I’d used hyperlapse on my phone. So, while she rested in the shade, I toiled my way back up, and did it using the phone. I’m not sure how edifying the results are, but I worked hard to get this footage so I’m going to show it anyway.

The heat was not intolerable, but it was quite hard work, and so we felt we’d earned outrselves a Nice Lunch back at the hotel. Lunch over, we checked in, collected our bags dumped everything in our room and went for (another) walk. Obviously.

By this stage, the heat was quite intense, so I felt better about not having walked over from Vila Nova da Barquinha. Our hotel is very handily placed for scenic and significant spots around the city. It borders some gardens and the river, which is the Nabão (we’ve moved away from the Tagus). The river is used to drive a waterwheel.

It’s not dramatic, but slowly turns away moving (I read) up to 750 hectolitres of water an hour.

As you can see, it’s not doing any real work. Its purpose is educational. According to info boards nearby, “Of the dozens of waterwheels that existed by the late 19th century, only the Mouchão waterwheel remains – built and maintained by the municipality – to preserve memories for future generations.” It’s built from oak and pine and is about 10m in diameter – a significant piece of machinery.

Crossing the bridge to get to the waterwheel takes one into the park, and we walked down to the old bridge that can be seen in the distance in the photo above.

We crossed the road, and I was slightly surprised to find a poster adveritising the imminent corrida back in Barquinha.

A reasonably big deal, then.

Jane wanted to visit a specific church in the town, the church of St. John the Baptist, so we walked towards it through the attractive streets

into the square in front of the church.

The statue is of Knights Templar Grand Master Gualdim Pais, and he faces the church.

which, as you can see, has a very elaborate Manueline portal.

Inside

there’s a feature which interested us – a Eucharistic Throne, one of those showy-offy bits of religious theatre indigenous to the Iberian peninsula of which the Papacy so disapproved that it was banned and only appears in a couple of places now.

The barrel ceiling over the throne is very decorative.

By this stage, the heat outside was getting really oppressive, so we headed back to the cool of the hotel for the rest of the day. Our hotel room gave us a good view of the castle, which is lit up rather attractively at night.

It just remained to get ourselves ready for another burst of relentless tourism on the morrow. I’ll regale you with tales of that in due course – stay tuned!