Neste evento vamos ficar a conhecer através de uma Visita Guiada o Convento da Arrábida.

Arrábida Convent:

The Arrábida Convent, built in the 16th century, covers 25 hectares, including the Old Convent, located on the highest part of the mountain, the New Convent, located halfway up the slope, the Garden and the Bom Jesus Sanctuary.

At the top of the mountain, the four chapels, the set of guardhouses for venerating the mysteries of the Passion and some cells carved into the rocks form what is known as the Old Convent.

The convent was founded in 1542 by Friar Martinho de Santa Maria, a Castilian Franciscan to whom João de Lencastre (1501-1571), the first Duke of Aveiro, ceded the land on the mountainside.

Prior to construction, the Ermida da Memória existed where the Old Convent is today, a place of great pilgrimages, where the first four Arrábidos friars lived for two years in cells carved out of the rocks: Martinho de Santa Maria, Diogo de Lisboa, Francisco Pedraita and São Pedro de Alcântara. D. Jorge de Lencastre, son of the 1st Duke of Aveiro, continued the work by having a fence built to enclose the convent area. Later, his cousin D. Álvaro had the guesthouse built and designed the guardhouses on the crest of the hill that connect the convent to the foot of the mountain, leaving three unfinished. Ana Manique de Lara, Álvaro's daughter-in-law, had two chapels built, while Álvaro's son, António de Lencastre, had the Sanctuary of Bom Jesus built in 1650.

With the extinction of the religious orders in 1834, the convent, the cells and the chapels scattered throughout the mountains were plundered and badly damaged as a result of abandonment.

In 1863, the Casa de Palmela acquired the convent, but work didn't begin until the 40s and 50s of the following century. Forty years later, in 1990, its then owner, Manuel de Souza Holstein Beck, sold the convent and the surrounding area, totalling 25 hectares, to the Fundação Oriente, the only institution that, in his opinion, gave guarantees of maintaining the same values with which, in the 16th century, his ancestors handed it over to the Arrábidos.