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Alenquer: Queens, Humanists, and Artists Built Its Bed
Photography by Claudine Boeglin
Thank you Clara at Museu do Presepio and Liliana at Museu de Vinho de Alenquer for your kind and elaborated guidance.
In western Ribatejo, Alenquer is a village perched on hilltops, feet in the Rio Tejo. Haughty, regal, and humanist, Alenquer is wrapped in a cradle of lush vegetation, its elegant houses on the hill, tribute to its distinguished past.
Alenquer stands fiercely since the Iron Age. After the passage of the Romans and later the Moors (8th–12th centuries), it was granted a fortified settlement. The town was taken by Christian forces in the 12th century under Afonso Henriques—Portugal’s first king. Alenquer was often given as a dowry or estate to Portuguese queens. In the 15th century, it was the birthplace of Damião de Góis, one of Portugal’s great Renaissance humanists and chroniclers.
Queens, thinkers, and artists have built the town’s peaceful heritage, with museums in their names, festas celebrating springtime between bullfighting and Christian faith, and “solidarity” woven into its psyche. Where else has an artist turned mayor ignited the town into communal action and high spirits in the times of the “Great Floods of 1967 in the name of solidarity? Artist D. José de Siqueira, then mayor of Alenquer, praised collective resilience as a prompt response to the devastations, in a time when the Tagus River had still no bed.
At around 35 kilometers from Lisbon, with no direct train or bus line, Alenquer and its sheer elegance of heart remind us that a peaceful sense of communal life—deliciously out of time—is a shared duty and an everyday craft. Add its fertile ground where red grapes, olives, fruits, and flowers spice all senses, and you might soon dream of such a life out of all chaos.
Photography Claudine Boeglin @dandyvagabond
Photos and texts by Claudine Boeglin. Special thanks to Clara at Museu do Presepio and Liliana at Museu de Vinho de Alenquer for their kind and elaborated guidance.
