Eastern Way

The ancient Ucrate was taken to the Moors in the 12th century and donated to the Order of the Hospitaller Knights of Malta soon after. The Cross of Malta is omnipresent here, attesting to the town’s importance in the medieval period of the Grand Priory of Crato, which incorporated an extensive region that today reaches part of the central region of Portugal.

The village of Crato was conquered by Portuguese troops in the 12th century, but
it was only after the donation to the Order of the Hospital, in 1232, that the settlement of the locality and region was uprooted. The castle must have been built between that date and 1270, the year in which the town received a charter from the Hospitallers. The importance of Crato to the order determined many more works in the fortress, to house the priory (constituted in 1340) and, soon after, the headquarters of the order itself, a status it enjoyed from 1350 onwards. In the second half of the 14th century, the works continued including a ditch and a barbican. In the 15th century, Crato’s castle was the scene of a remarkable episode of the war between the regent D. Pedro and his nephew, future D. Afonso V: the prior of the Order of the Hospital housed the widowed queen D. Leonor de Aragão, and the regent D. Pedro, in reprisal, ordered the destruction of the fortress. The strategic relevance of the village determined the castle’s adjustment to a star fort, from 1642, but the works were notyet finished twenty years later when the village was besieged and razed by D. João de Áustria. For this reason, apart from the ruins of towers, a cistern, and the arches of the governor’s house, very little remains of the castle.

In the Order of the Hospital’s possession, the town of Ucrate saw the birth of its main church in the mid-13th century, as can be seen from an inscription located in the temple nave, bearing the date of 1287. The current building is, however, the result of a major renovation carried out in the mid-15th century. At that time, the prior Friar Vasco de Ataíde ordered the reconstruction of the church, which acquired a body of three ships. A century later, it was the turn of Infante D. Luís to sponsor the construction of a new main chapel, in a campaign that extended through the main façade, as witnessed by the main Renaissance portal that includes the Ataíde e Melo family shield.

Inside stand out the body vaulting, done in 1891, the main chapel coffered ceiling, with paintings allusive to the Order of the Hospital, and the blue and white azulejos, with representations of the Virgin Life, dated mid-18th century.

In this town, the railway station began operating in 1863 and was a stopping point in the connection between Abrantes and Elvas (today between Entroncamento and Badajoz). The Eastern Line, as it became known, has long been under threat of closure to passenger traffic.

Municipal Museum of Crato
In the historical area of Crato, housed in an 18th-century palace that, for its beauty, has a permanent exhibition on the region history (from the first prehistoric occupations to the Baroque period), the Municipal Museum of Crato is a recent space, inaugurated in 2000 and divided into three floors. At the entrance, the visitor can discover the traces of the megalithic and Roman periods. The first floor offers a room dedicated to the Order of Malta and a collection from the Monastery of Santa Maria de Flor da Rosa. On the upper floor, you can discover an ethnographic exhibition dedicated to the agricultural and industrial activities of Crato’s municipality, with vestiges of traditions that still remain today, and a room for temporary exhibitions.