Tomar, Portugal: Where the Knights Templar lie, ready, waiting

We can thank the Knights Templar for all this, that ultra-secret organization who quietly decamped from the light into the shadows centuries ago, who holed themselves up in an obscure town, securing their power base for eternity, and who still control everything.  Though some might deny it, they’re still around, centered in Tomar, Portugal, the type of small town that the hack author Dan Brown would be prowling around, taking notes for his next conspiracy theory thriller book while also feasting on clams.

As I’m the type who read too much fantasy literature and played too many adventure video games, I’ve been continually running across references to the Knights Templar.  The medieval organization is fodder anytime a mysterious storyline is needed, and features prominently in modern conspiracy theories.  I didn’t expect to run across them during this trip to Portugal, but like the Spanish Inquisition, nobody expects to find the Knights Templar.  They just keep finding you.

 

My little rental car puttered across the Portuguese countryside from an area called Estremadura, just a few hours north of Lisbon.  I had spent several days on and near the coast, and was now heading inland to Tomar, in the Santarém district.  Portugal isn’t large or crowded and driving presents few challenges.  Tomar is a small town not much on the tourist radar.  My Rick Steves guide didn’t even mention it.

Just parking my rental car in Tomar revealed much.  It’s a small but full town; I tried four parking places before I found one that was judged to be legal and good for overnight stays.  During all four tries, various local people came out to help me, looking at the lines and the signs and discussing whether it was a proper space.  I felt utterly cared for.  My little hotel in Tomar (also known as Thomar) was right on the main drag, prime location.  It was the most expensive and best hotel of my stay in Portugal, but still only costing €36.  The Thomar Story Guest House is beautifully designed, spotlessly clean, and they had been sending me several welcome emails in advance, complete with the code for the front door and an attached map.  I have rarely seen such advance service, and never from a budget hotel.

 

There’s something overshadowing the town

 

Something is looming over little Tomar, omnipresent.  You can see it from most everywhere in town, no escape.  My days so far in Portugal had been spent visiting monasteries, churches, or something connected to a king, which is 87.4% of everything in Europe.  But the specter haunting Tomar is different.

It’s called various names, such as Tomar Castle, but known mostly as the Convent of Christ (Convento de Cristo).  It’s a church, a monastery, a headquarters, and a fortress, receiving heavy use in all these areas.  It’s a massive complex that sits on a hill right, I mean right, over the town, ever-looming.  Most Euro sites can be somewhat categorized.  That’s the old castle of the king.  That’s the cathedral.  This Tomar site is different, because it’s connected to an organization that’s different, and little understood.  For this, we need to go back to the source.

 

The name of the Knights Templar comes from the original “The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon”, translated variously as “The Knights of the Poor Temple”.  They started around the year 1129 (sources vary) after the first Crusade, as a monastic protection unit for Christian pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land.  Their headquarters at the time was a place on the Temple Mount, above Solomon’s temple, thus the connection.  They first ran on donations, but wealthy people gave not just money but lands and other revenue streams, and thus they became independent, and eventually so wealthy they financed projects of their own.  The mystique came when the pope made them exempt from local laws and borders, and thus they were above it all, for quite a while.

The Knights Templar, so rich now, had some enemies, especially a French king who persuaded the Pope to disband the organization in 1312.  He owed them money anyway and this would cancel the debt.  The Holy Land was by then controlled by the Arabs, so the purpose of the Knights was vague anyway.  Their secretive status was publicized to be used as a charge against them, but that also added to their mystique.  The Knights’ land, their wealth, all taken.  Except in Portugal, where King Dinis persuaded the Pope to let him create a new organization, the Order of Christ, and transfer everything to that, which was just an accounting trick.

Let’s review:  the Knights Templar was large, secretive, powerful, rich, international, meddling, and above the law.  That’s enough to suspect them of everything.  The symbols and rituals they invented, such as the red cross, were later used in Masonic organizations, thus implying a connection.  (Aha!)  They’re connected with the Ark of the Covenant, the Kabbalah, and the Illuminati, but you knew that.  Nowadays, they are dredged up to be used in The Da Vinci Code book, in Assassin’s Creed video game, and proposed as a connection to the mystery of Oak Island, Nova Scotia, along with a million other usages.  Because their assets were taken after being disbanded, there are still rumors of Templar wealth, of hoards hidden from papal and royal eyes.  If some medieval cache is discovered in southern France next week, someone will try to connect it back to the Knights.

 

The entrance to the complex

Their headquarters in Portugal was here, in Tomar, and all that wealth built the huge complex of buildings on a hilltop now overlooking, overshadowing the town.  I’m certain they placed some hidden treasure there as well and left clues in the plays of Shakespeare as to how one may located it, if only you were clever enough.  They probably left other clues about the location of the Holy Grail.

You’ll read that Tomar was the headquarters for the Knights Templar for 700 or 900 years, but no, they’re gone.  Tomar was just a regional HQ anyway, though the succeeding organization, Order of Christ, did indeed survive, and is technically still alive today though it’s been secularized and reformed many times.

Nevertheless, their complex is still around, there in Tomar, and you should see it.  Knowing its history helps you mentally buy into the place, as so many sights are as dead as their former inhabitants without knowing the backstory.  One can walk up from the town, a bit of a hike, or use the pay parking lots on the hillsides around it.  I had no preconception of it, and thus found the place delightful.  The approach is through a courtyard with a 16-sided (almost round) church on the right, the Charola, where a guy lay stretched out, wearing only shorts, sleeping in the sun.   A relaxing place, okay.  Most likely he was a guard Knight, in disguise.

 

 

The visitor’s route inside is somewhat sequential; arrows point the way through the first part, and some spots, like the round church, can only be entered once (they check your ticket).  The church is marvelous.  A center column serves as altar and leads to gothic arches at its top.  The decoration is rather colorful, with lots of gold, eastern influences.  It’s circular, and it’s said the Knights attended on horseback, as knights should.

After this, you have free run of the cloisters and other unidentified parts of the complex, and you’ll find yourself retracing steps to ensure you didn’t miss areas.  There are endless hallways and passageways and large rooms whose purposes are unknown.  Be sure to climb any stairways, as some of the best spots are on the rooftops.  One large attraction is a massive, ornate window, done in Manueline style, incorporating Templar symbols and knotwork sculpture, only seen from the rooftop of the adjacent Claustro de Santa Bárbara.

 

 

The complex has several cloisters, at least three, and it’s confusing how they are grouped.  One became my favorite, with its very intricate structure and a dark-orange sandstone color that reminds me of Petra in Jordan.  I think it’s called the Claustro Pincipal, and that’s it in the photo above.  It was deserted.  The entire complex was only lightly visited.  I was there in late October, and many areas I had to myself.  You’re walking on the ground, climbing rooftops, going down hallways.  It’s exhausting.

If this were a movie, this would be the part where someone tells me, “Oh, all the Knights are long-gone now,” and then suddenly I notice a tall bearded man watching me across the courtyard with piercing, ancient eyes.  He’s wearing a small but unusual red cross around his neck and is that chainmail armor I see poking out beneath his tunic?  I look again, but he’s gone.

 

 

 

The Town

The main reason to visit Tomar is to see if the Knights make contact of course, but a secondary reason is the delightful town.  I wander south of my hotel just a block or two and there’s an outdoor market, only ten stands or so, but they’re wonderful.  I stopped first at a charcuterie stand because they’re selling beer and wine.  A glass of wine at a place like this in Portugal means a plastic glass filled all the way up.  I stood at a table with two other guys and slurped, eyeing the numerous cuts of dead animals around me.

Further on are various bakeries, breads and churro stands.  Another stand had adjacent picnic tables.  I’m not sure of his theme, but he had cheese, and wine.  I asked the man just to choose some cheese, mixed.  And a glass of wine.  And hey, he has fish soup too.  I get it all.  Everything arrives in plastic, including a ton of bread (every bread basket I get in Portugal is enough for four).  Wine and cheese and bread and soup is a simple pleasure, one that has surely kept millions of people alive.  I sit at the table and think how clever I am.  One great thing about Portugal is anyone can manage the language even if you don’t speak Portuguese.  It just all somehow works out.

 

A bakery stand.  Just out in public.

The main pedestrian street in Tomar is Rua Serpa Pinto, leading from the small Nabão River to the main square, Praca da Republica, with the Templar complex looming on the hilltop above.  Here, along with the three or four streets above it, holds enough restaurants to handle everyone.

I have trouble choosing restaurants, mainly because I like to see everything before deciding and then I’m afraid the one I eventually choose won’t be perfect.  Overwhelmed tonight, I slide gently into a casual diner just for a glass of wine, and then notice they have seafood.  Clams, can I have some clams?  They don’t have it.  Something else?  They don’t have it.  The nice, cute girl informs me their cook doesn’t arrive until 8:00.  Her solution is to offer me some already-cooked shrimp instead, and tell me they stay open until midnight.

Dinner, then, is a few doors down, where an 18-year old punk rocker takes care of me, and his mom is cooking in the back.  He leads me through the menu selections, and I get a slab of fish so monstrous that I can’t finish it.  That plus a half-liter of wine plus soup and a coffee is €16.

 

I went back to the diner for the clams, of course, a giant portion for €8.  White wine from a tap was one euro.  My cool, cute redhead waitress is smoking a cigar at a table with her friends.  Now that’s it’s 10:00 p.m. on a Friday, the town is coming alive.  Tascas (taverns) and bars are scattered throughout the town’s old center, and people are about.

Tomar’s main square is on the west end of the pedestrian street very near my hotel, and it is here I wandered, looking for satisfaction.  A fountain sits in the center, a statue of a woman looking very regal, and the paving stones have a checkerboard pattern.  The back of the square has the town hall, a regal building.  Nice, but rising up in back of it, utterly dominating it, is the Knights Templar complex, lit at night to show its unyielding power.

I hear music coming from one place on the north side of the square, and “Tom’s Law of Travel” says when you hear music, go check it out.  It’s a club, with tables and a bar and an empty space at the bar, thanks.  I order something, probably a beer now.  The music is amazing; about eight guys dressed in black performance costumes, crooning out traditional music.  These guys are pros and they’re playing here in a no-cover nightspot in Tomar.

 

In the movie version of this trip, it would be here that I notice again the mysterious bearded man that I saw earlier within the Templar complex.  I would step towards him and he would vanish, leaving behind an amulet covered with strange carvings that I would use to solve the mystery.  There would also be a beautiful co-star involved, and an exciting end to this story.

 

Instead, I got up the next morning, alone, and motored to my next destination, knightless.

 

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