The History and Significance of the Convento dos Capuchos
From a 1560 vow to abandonment in the forest — the story of the Franciscan friars who chose to live with almost nothing, and the cork that gave their convent its name.
The Convento dos Capuchos was first backed in 1560 by Álvaro de Castro, fulfilling a vow made by his father, the viceroy João de Castro. From the start it was conceived not as a grand monument but as the opposite — a place of radical Franciscan poverty, contemplation and renunciation, built as close to the bare earth as stone and cork would allow.
Two centuries of Franciscan life
For more than two centuries, from the 16th until the end of the 18th, Franciscan friars lived here in deliberate self-denial, sleeping on the floor of nine cork-lined cells and growing their own food in a vegetable garden. Cork stripped from the surrounding forest insulated the cells against the damp Serra cold and gave the convent its enduring nickname, the 'Convent of Cork'. When Portugal's liberal regime dissolved the religious orders at the end of the 18th century, the friars departed and the convent was abandoned to the forest.
Abandonment and UNESCO recognition
Today it survives as one of the most evocative ruins in Iberia and, since 1995, as part of the UNESCO-listed Cultural Landscape of Sintra. To walk it now is to read a four-century argument about how little a person actually needs.
Frequently asked
Who founded the Convento dos Capuchos?
It was first backed in 1560 by Álvaro de Castro, fulfilling a vow made by his father, the viceroy João de Castro. It became a convent of Franciscan friars devoted to poverty and contemplation.
Why is it nicknamed the Convent of Cork?
Cork from the surrounding forest was used throughout the convent to line and insulate the friars' cells against the damp Serra cold — and even as bedding. That profuse use of cork gave it the enduring nickname 'Convent of Cork'.