The Alcobaça Monastery is one of the first buildings associated with the Cistercian Order in Portugal. It was founded in 1153 as a gift from the first Portuguese king, Afonso I or Afonso Henriques (1112–1185) to Bernard of Clairvaux, following the king’s conquest of the city of Santarém from the Moors in March 1147. The foundation of the monastery was part of a larger strategy by King Afonso I to assert his authority and promote the colonisation of lands recently conquered from the Moors during the “Reconquista Cristã” or Reconquista.
Construction began in 1178, some 25 years after the first Cistercian monks settled in the Alcobaça region. Initially, the monks lived in wooden houses, and would only move to the newly built monastery in 1223. The church proper wasn’t completed until 1252. Church and adjacent monastery are the earliest examples of truly Gothic architecture in Portugal, and the church itself was the largest in Portugal at the time of its completion. The final touch in this large mediaeval ensemble was given in the late 13th century, when King Denis I (1261–1325) ordered the construction of the Gothic cloister, also known as the Cloister of Silence.
