Ourém (), formerly known as Vila Nova de Ourém, is a

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality'' may also mean the ...

in the district of Santarém in

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of th ...

. The population in 2011 was 45,932,Instituto Nacional de Estatística
/ref> in an area of 416.68 km². The municipality of Ourém contains two cities: Ourém (about 12,000 residents) and Fátima (about 11,000 inhabitants). The municipality is bordered by the municipalities of Pombal (to the north), Alvaiázere (to the northeast), Ferreira do Zêzere and

Tomar Tomar (), also known in English as Thomar (the ancient name of Tomar), is a city and a municipality in the Santarém district of Portugal. The town proper has a population of about 20,000. The municipality population in 2011 was 40,677, in an a ...

(to the east),

Torres Novas Torres Novas () is a Portuguese municipality in the district of Santarém, in the Médio Tejo of the Centro region. The population of the municipality was approximately 36,717 (from the 2011 census), with the city of Torres Novas (seat of the mu ...

(to the southeast),

Alcanena Alcanena () is a portuguese town and municipality of Ribatejo in Santarém District. The population in 2011 was 13,868, in an area of 127.33 km². The current Mayor is Rui Anastácio (Partido Social Democrata) and the president of the Munic ...

(to the southwest), and Batalha and

Leiria Leiria (; cel-x-proto, ɸlāryo) is a city and municipality in the Central Region of Portugal. It is the 2nd largest city in that same region, with a municipality population of 128,640 (as of 2021) in an area of . It is the seat of its own dist ...

(to the west). The main historical attraction of the municipality is the mighty Castle of Ourém. Nevertheless, millions of faithful

Catholics The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

come to the parish of Fátima every year to visit

Cova da Iria Cova da Iria is a quarter in the city and civil parish of Fátima, Santarém District, Portugal. Several of the reported Marian apparitions of Our Lady of Fátima witnessed by the three small children-shepherds of Fátima in 1917 took plac ...

, the site where three child shepherds are said to have had visions of

Our Lady of Fátima Our Lady of Fátima ( pt, Nossa Senhora de Fátima, ); formally known as Our Lady of the Holy Rosary of Fátima) is a Catholic title of Mary, mother of Jesus, based on the Marian apparitions reported in 1917 by three shepherd children at the ...

in 1917. The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fátima has become one of the largest religious tourism sites in the world. The present Mayor is Luís Miguel Albuquerque, elected by the

Social Democratic Party The name Social Democratic Party or Social Democrats has been used by many political parties in various countries around the world. Such parties are most commonly aligned to social democracy as their political ideology. Active parties For ...

. The municipal holiday is June 20.

History

A fortification existed in the region of Ourém since at least the period of Muslim domination. The area was reconquered by Christians in 1136, and the town was donated in 1178 by the first king of Portugal,

Afonso Henriques Afonso I of PortugalOr also ''Affonso'' (Archaic Portuguese-Galician) or ''Alphonso'' (Portuguese-Galician) or ''Alphonsus'' ( Latin version), sometimes rendered in English as ''Alphonzo'' or ''Alphonse'', depending on the Spanish or French in ...

, to his third daughter, Princess Theresa. The princess granted it a letter of feudal rights (

foral 200px, Foral of Castro Verde - Portugal The word ''foral'' ({{IPA-pt, fuˈɾaɫ, eu, plural: ''forais'') is a noun derived from the Portuguese word ''foro'', ultimately from Latin ''forum'', equivalent to Spanish ''fuero'', Galician '' foro'', ...

) in 1180, to promote the settlement and development of the village. Under the

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

s, the village was apparently called ''Abdegas'', but during the times of the

Reconquista The ' ( Spanish, Portuguese and Galician for "reconquest") is a historiographical construction describing the 781-year period in the history of the Iberian Peninsula between the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in 711 and the fall of the N ...

(12th century) it was called ''Portus de Auren'', from which the name ''Ourém'' was later derived. According to popular myth, the name of the village is actually derived from a Moorish Princess who converted to Christianity under the name of ''Oureana''. The town's historical nucleus developed around the Castle of Ourém, which during the Reconquista served as watchpost for the

Castle of Leiria The Castle of Leiria ( pt, Castelo de Leiria) is a medieval castle in the civil parish of Leiria, Pousos, Barreira e Cortes, municipality of Leiria, district of Leiria. History The castle of Leiria was built by D. Afonso Henriques for the pu ...

, an important stronghold located nearby. In the mid-14th century, King Peter I turned Ourém and its lands into a

County A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesChambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

. The third Count of Ourém was the celebrated

Nuno Álvares Pereira D. Nuno Álvares Pereira, O. Carm. (; 24 June 1360 – 1 November 1431) was a Portuguese general of great success who had a decisive role in the 1383-1385 Crisis that assured Portugal's independence from Castile. He later became a mystic ...

, the knight who led the Portuguese army to victory against the

Castilians Castilians (Spanish: ''castellanos'') are those people who live in certain former areas of the historical Kingdom of Castile, but the region's exact limits are disputed. A broader definition is to consider as Castilians the population belonging ...

in the

Battle of Aljubarrota The Battle of Aljubarrota (; see Aljubarrota) was fought between the Kingdom of Portugal and the Crown of Castile on 14 August 1385. Forces commanded by King John I of Portugal and his general Nuno Álvares Pereira, with the support of Engli ...

in 1385. Under Count Afonso (1402–1460), fourth Count of Ourém, the town flourished. To accommodate his court, Count Afonso remodelled the old-fashioned castle and built a palace inside it following the trends in 15th-century Italian military architecture. The ruins of the palace and castle are the main historical and touristic attraction of the town nowadays. Count Afonso is buried in the

crypt A crypt (from Latin ''crypta'' "vault") is a stone chamber beneath the floor of a church or other building. It typically contains coffins, sarcophagi, or religious relics. Originally, crypts were typically found below the main apse of a chur ...

of the main church of Ourém in a magnificent

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

tomb created by one of Portugal's main sculptors of the time, Diogo Pires-o-Velho. After reaching its peak in the 15th century, the town entered a period of relative decline. The town and castle were greatly damaged by the

1755 Lisbon earthquake The 1755 Lisbon earthquake, also known as the Great Lisbon earthquake, impacted Portugal, the Iberian Peninsula, and Northwest Africa on the morning of Saturday, 1 November, Feast of All Saints, at around 09:40 local time. In combination with ...

and the Napoleonic Invasions. Until its elevation to the status of a city on August 16, 1991, Ourém was known as Vila Nova de Ourém.

Legend

The legend of the name of the village and Oureana is retold by ''Friar Bernardino de Brito'' in his Chronicle of the Order of Cister (1602): In a surprise attack on the St John's Day in 1158, a Christian knight, ''Gonçalo Hermigues'' and his companions kidnapped a Moorish princess with the famous Arab name of

Fatima Fāṭima bint Muḥammad ( ar, فَاطِمَة ٱبْنَت مُحَمَّد}, 605/15–632 CE), commonly known as Fāṭima al-Zahrāʾ (), was the daughter of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and his wife Khadija. Fatima's husband was Ali, th ...

. The knight took Fatima to a small village of the recently created Kingdom of Portugal, in the Serra de Aire hills. The princess fell in love with the Christian knight and decided to become herself a Christian, taking the name of Oureana. After their marriage, the princess received as prize the town which she called Ourém, derived from her own name. The name of the parish of Fátima of Ourém is probably related to this legend.

Parishes

Administratively, the municipality is divided into 13 civil parishes (''

freguesias ''Freguesia'' (), usually translated as "parish" or "civil parish", is the third-level administrative subdivision of Portugal, as defined by the 1976 Constitution. It is also the designation for local government jurisdictions in the former Port ...

''): * Alburitel * Atouguia * Caxarias *

Espite Espite is a Freguesia (Portugal), civil parish in the municipality of Ourém, Portugal. The population in 2011 was 1,104,

* Fátima * Freixianda, Ribeira do Farrio e Formigais * Gondemaria e Olival * Matas e Cercal * Nossa Senhora da Piedade * Nossa Senhora das Misericórdias * Rio de Couros e Casal dos Bernardos * Seiça * Urqueira

Population

International relations

Ourém is twinned with the following cities: * Le Plessis-Trévise, France (since 1992) * São Filipe, Cape Verde (since 1999) *

Altötting Altötting (, Bavarian: ; ''Oidäding'') is a town in Bavaria, capital of the district Altötting of Germany. For 500 years it has been the scene of religious pilgrimages by Catholics in honor of Mary, including a visit by Pope John Paul II i ...

, Germany (since 2009) *

Częstochowa Częstochowa ( , ; german: Tschenstochau, Czenstochau; la, Czanstochova) is a city in southern Poland on the Warta River with 214,342 inhabitants, making it the thirteenth-largest city in Poland. It is situated in the Silesian Voivodeship (admin ...

, Poland (since 1997) * Monapo, Mozambique (since 2001) *

Lourdes Lourdes (, also , ; oc, Lorda ) is a market town situated in the Pyrenees. It is part of the Hautes-Pyrénées department in the Occitanie region in southwestern France. Prior to the mid-19th century, the town was best known for the Château ...

, France

Cooperation agreements

Pitești Pitești () is a city in Romania, located on the river Argeș. The capital and largest city of Argeș County, it is an important commercial and industrial center, as well as the home of two universities. Pitești is situated in the historical re ...

, Romania (since 2011)

Notable people

Artur de Oliveira Santos Artur de Oliveira Santos (22 January 1884 – 27 June 1955), was a Portuguese journalist and local politician, most widely known for being the Municipal Administrator of Ourém, in which the locality of Fátima is located, during the time of ...

(1884 in Ourém – 1955) a journalist, local politician and the Municipal Administrator of Ourém in 1917 during the time of the apparitions of

Francisco and Jacinta Marto Francisco de Jesus Marto (11 June 1908 – 4 April 1919) and Jacinta de Jesus Marto (11 March 1910 – 20 February 1920) were siblings from Aljustrel, a small hamlet near Fátima, Portugal, who with their cousin Lúcia dos Santos (1907–2 ...

(1908–1919) & (1910–1920) siblings from Aljustrel, with their cousin Lúcia dos Santos (1907–2005) witnessed three apparitions of the Angel of Peace in 1916 and several apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary at

in 1917 *

José Luandino Vieira José Luandino Vieira (born José Vieira Mateus da Graça on 4 May 1935) is an Angolan writer of short fiction and novels. Biography Vieira was born in Lagoa de Furadouro, Ourém, Portugal to impoverished parents—his father was a cobbler, his m ...

(born 1935 in Lagoa de Furadouro) an Angolan writer of short fiction and novels * Nuno Laranjeiro (born 1983 in Ourém) a former footballer with 347 club caps

References

External links

Municipality official websiteOurém Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ourem Municipality Cities in Portugal Populated places in Santarém District Municipalities of Santarém District