GUIMARÃES CASTLE: PORTUGAL WAS BORN HERE
Recognized by many as the castle that, par excellence, is linked to the origins of Portugal, the Guimarães Castle is an amazing structure in many respects. First of all, because of its origins, singularly obscure. It is certain that we are facing a county structure, the result of the initiative of the emblematic Countess of Portugal, D. Mumadona Dias. Not being mentioned in a detailed statement of property sharing between the countess and her children, in the middle of 950, we can infer that at that time it would not yet exist. But at the end of that same year, 950, it is already mentioned, in a donation in which the Guimarães Monastery is mentioned under its authority. It is, therefore, a condal foundation, from the second half of the 10th century. Countess Mumadona herself declares, in a parchment dated 968, who had founded it to protect the monastery of Guimarães from attack by the “Gentiles” (probably referring to the Normans). This primitive castle, embedded among the granite outcrops, must have been built in wood and there are few traces left of it.
At the end of the 11th century, during the government of the Counts D. Henrique and D. Teresa, the castle underwent a profound renovation, the remains of which remain mainly on the North façade, facing the Campo de S. Mamede, where the base of the walls presents a different stage, with large stones. These traces document an enclosure with a rounded plan. It was this castle that faced the forces of Afonso VII de Leão and Castile, when the monarch raised siege to the infant D. Afonso Henriques.
No século XII, no tempo do nosso primeiro monarca, sofreu uma reforma profunda, a partir da qual passou a abranger o perímetro atual, muito embora ainda sem as suas oito torres. Com as reformas góticas, no reinado de D. Afonso III ou de D. Dinis (quando as muralhas de Guimarães estavam a ser intervencionadas), teve uma profunda reforma, que lhe acrescentou os oito torreões do seu perímetro (quatro dos quais enquadrando as duas portas de entrada) e a sua torre de menagem.
It was in the second half of the 13th century, with the Gothic reforms, that the castle of Guimarães acquired its current form. By that time the border of the kingdom was already too wide, giving an increasingly secondary role to the Castle of Guimarães. But he played a decisive role in the Civil War of 1321-24, which opposed D. Dinis to the infant D. Afonso, heir to the throne, which culminated in the Siege of Guimarães in 1322. And its importance was again tested in the Crisis of 1383-85, when he was surrounded by the Master of Avis.
In the fifteenth century it still maintained some relevance, but from the end of the Four hundred hundreds it was emptied of military and strategic importance. The borders were too far apart and the weapons had evolved into pirobalistics (the “firearms”). From the first years of the sixteenth century, Castelo de Guimarães was experiencing the years of neglect and decay. With no military function, it came to be used as a prison or prison. It was only in the 19th century that the population of Guimarães and, in its wake, the Portuguese were reconciled with the Guimarães Castle. From the 19th century onwards, it started to be recognized as an emblematic structure of the Portuguese Middle Ages, closely associated with the autonomic process in which, truly, it played little role. Classified as a National Monument in 1881.
