Lisbon Cathedral

The cathedral was built on the site of the city's main mosque after the reconquest of 1147, and the English crusader Gilbert of Hastings became its first bishop. The fortress-like Romanesque church took shape up to the early thirteenth century; in the late thirteenth century King Dinis added a Gothic cloister, and a Baroque sacristy followed in the seventeenth century.

The earthquake of 1755 destroyed the Gothic main chapel, the royal pantheon, much of the cloister and many side chapels. The church was partly rebuilt, and a large renovation in the twentieth century stripped away later decoration to bring back its medieval look. The rose window on the façade was put back together from surviving fragments at that time. The cathedral has been a National Monument since 1910.

Inside, the Latin-cross church has three aisles, a transept and an ambulatory, with three fine Gothic tombs from the mid-fourteenth century. Excavations in the cloister, begun in 1990, uncovered Roman streets and shops, Visigothic structures and remains of the medieval mosque.