Introduction

From Rua da Atalaia you see a Manueline stone portal in a long, closed wall. People live behind it. Convento das Bernardas was the Cistercian order's only monastery in the Algarve and the largest women's convent in the region, founded in 1509 by D. Manuel I in thanks for the repulse of a Moorish attack on Arzila. The nuns left it in 1862, from 1890 it was a steam-driven flour mill and pasta factory, and in 2012 it became 78 homes designed by Eduardo Souto de Moura. The portal is the oldest thing left standing from the 1500s. The rest is private property and is seen from the outside, but it is one of the town's better building histories, and it can be read from the pavement.

Historical highlights

The king's thanks for Arzila

D. Manuel I founded the monastery in 1509 in thanks for the repulse of a Moorish attack on Portuguese Arzila in Morocco; according to the town museum, the people of Tavira themselves had a part in lifting the siege. The house was intended for Poor Clares, but Bishop D. Fernando Coutinho completed it in 1528, installed his sister as the first abbess and handed it over to the Cistercian nuns in 1530. For three hundred years it was the order's only house in the Algarve and the largest women's convent in the region, with nuns from all over the Algarve.

Portal, earthquake and a Maundy Thursday procession

The portal is Manueline but raised with baroque fogaréus, and the inscription above it is dated 1676. How hard the earthquake of 1755 struck, nobody knows, but there was rebuilding in the second half of the 1700s. The nuns were not meek. In 1787 the Misericórdia decided that the Maundy Thursday procession should never again pass the monastery, because the year before the sisters had made the priests fall silent during the litany. When the Capuchins built directly opposite around 1600, the legend of a secret tunnel between the two houses arose. The channels that have been found are a few metres long.

From dissolution to pasta factory

In 1862 the monastery was dissolved and nationalised, a fire took part of it in 1863, and in 1866 José Maria de Lemos bought the building. The last nun died in 1869 in a house on Rua de S. Sebastião. When the architect Albrecht Haupt saw the place in 1888, it was "in complete ruin", but the cloister still stood with its octagonal columns. From 1890 it was a steam-driven flour mill and pasta factory. After 1920 the cloister, the middle wing and the bell tower were demolished. The factory closed in 1968.

Souto de Moura

A listing procedure was opened in 2000 and lapsed in 2009, so the building has no legal protection. It went well anyway. Souto de Moura designed the conversion in 2006-09, and in 2012 the 78 homes were finished: 57 in the monastery wings, 21 new terraced houses in an L-shaped building to the east. The nave is the reception, and the cloister has become a courtyard with a pool. In 2017 the project received the European Award for Architectural Heritage Intervention for having built holiday homes for a private client without destroying the monastery.

Practical

Private housing, no access. The portal sits in the north facade on Rua da Atalaia; look for the baroque fogaréus and the year 1676 above the arch. If you walk round to the south side towards the salt marsh, you see the long rear facing the Gilão and understand why the monastery could own mills out there.

Timeline and context

Timeline

• 1492 D. João II grants water from Fonte da Atalaia to a planned convent of nuns.
• 1509 D. Manuel I founds the monastery in thanks for the repulsed Moorish attack on Arzila.
• 1528-30 Building is complete; Bishop D. Fernando Coutinho hands it over to the Cistercian nuns.
• 1537 D. João III allows the monastery to buy mills in the salt marsh.
• 1755 The earthquake damages the monastery badly; rebuilding in the second half of the 1700s.
• 1836 The Algarve's Bernardine nuns are gathered in Tavira because the house is the most spacious.
• 1862 The monastery is dissolved and nationalised.
• 1866 Sold to José Maria de Lemos.
• 1869 The last nun dies in a house on Rua de S. Sebastião.
• 1888 Albrecht Haupt finds the place in ruin, but the cloister still stands.
• 1890 Steam-driven flour mill and pasta factory; after 1920 the cloister and bell tower are demolished.
• 1968 The factory closes.
• 2000-09 A listing procedure is opened and lapses; no legal protection.
• 2006-12 Eduardo Souto de Moura converts it into 78 homes; European heritage award 2017.

Why it is here

The monastery stands on the old Campo da Atalaia, where the town gives way to the salt marsh along the right bank of the Gilão. This was the edge, and it suited an enclosed convent of nuns with a rectangular wall around it. The water came from Fonte da Atalaia, which the king granted as early as 1492, and the marsh outside brought income: the monastery's grain mills out there were still its most important property in 1823. The house was the largest of its kind in the region, and that is why the government gathered the Algarve's Bernardines precisely here in 1836.

What is left

Less than you think, and more than you fear. The cloister, the middle wing and the bell tower disappeared in the factory years, so the columns Haupt drew in 1888 no longer exist. What remains is the portal, the church walls with the arches to choir and transept, the cell windows in the west wing and the thick stone of the wings. Souto de Moura let them stand and set the homes in behind them; the courtyard with the pool lies roughly where the cloister was. It is not a museum, and that is probably why it exists. A building without listing survives best when someone pays to live in it.