Alcobaca Monastery

Alcobaca Monastery, in the town of Alcobaca in Portugal's Oeste region, is a Cistercian monastery founded in 1153 by Afonso Henriques, the first king of Portugal, with construction beginning in 1178 and the church consecrated in 1252. By 1300 it had become the richest and most influential monastery in Portugal, home to roughly a thousand monks, and its church and monastery are considered the first Gothic buildings raised in Portugal. The abbey holds the ornate Gothic tombs of King Pedro I and his mistress Ines de Castro, and its once-extensive medieval library was pillaged by French forces in 1810, with the surviving remnants now held in Portugal's national library. Alcobaca ceased to function as a monastery when Portugal dissolved its religious orders in 1834, survived the 1755 Lisbon earthquake with little structural damage, was declared a national monument in 1907, and was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1989.