Alcobaca, Bathalha & Fatima- day-trip destinations from Figueira da Foz

Close to Nazare, in fact, just get off the bus one stop earlier, is the town of Alcobaca, site of Portugal’s largest church and Cistercian monastery. The impressive Abbey dominates the town square and proves an awe-inspiring site for thousands of tourists each year.

Inside the church lie the tombs of King Pedro I and his ill-fated mistress Ines de Castro. In a love story worthy of Shakespeare the tragic lovers were doomed never to be together by the strictures of Royal society and King Pedro’s father who had Ines murdered in order to protect his son’s name. King Pedro exacted his bloody revenge for his love’s murder after his father died when he ordered all involved in the plot to kill his mistress to be murdered themselves; the rest of the court who had been spared death were subjected to humiliation as the King ordered them to worship Ines’ withered and decomposed hand. Upon his own death, Kind Pedro I ordered his tomb to be buried facing his mistresses tomb so that on Judgement Day she would be the first sight that his eyes would lay upon.

Near to Alcobaca, just a few kilometres North, lies the Abbey of Bathalha, another impressive monastery built to commemorate the battle of Aljubarrata in 1385, which signified two hundred years of Portuguese independence from Spanish invaders. To the East of Alcobaca you will find Fatima, the world-famous point of pilgrimage for hundreds of thousands of Roman Catholics who believe that the Virgin Mary appeared in a vision to three young children who were tending their flock of sheep in Fatima in 1917.