Quinta das Lágrimas — the Fountain of Tears

OVERVIEW

Quinta das Lágrimas — the Estate of Tears — lies in Coimbra and has been listed as a building of public interest since 1977. It has twelve hectares of gardens and a palace now run as a luxury hotel. The Fonte das Lágrimas, the Fountain of Tears, stands in the grounds by the spring identified by the historian António de Vasconcelos, its entrance framed by a broken arch probably of the fourteenth century.

HISTORY

Prince Pedro, heir to the Portuguese throne, began a long affair with Inês de Castro, his wife's lady-in-waiting, from about 1340. In 1355 his father King Afonso IV — suspecting Inês and her powerful Castilian family of designs on the throne — sent men who killed her. When Pedro became king he took his revenge on her killers, and the tradition holds that he had her body exhumed, crowned and enthroned, and required the court to do homage to it. Pedro and Inês lie in facing tombs at Alcobaça.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

The estate takes its name from the tears she is said to have shed. The spring is said to have risen from them, and the red staining in its stone bottom to be her blood, which will not wash out. The gardens are said to be walked by her still, heard weeping, looking for Pedro. It is one of the oldest continuously told ghost traditions in Portugal, attached to a murder that is solidly documented history and to a fountain you can stand in front of.

VISITING

The gardens are open to visitors for a charge and include the Fonte das Lágrimas and the Fonte dos Amores; the palace is a hotel with a restaurant. Across the Mondego from Coimbra's old city.