Sao Joao de Tarouca Monastery

The Monastery of São João de Taroca was the first Cistercian monastery in Portugal, it was founded in 1140, construction began in 1154, and one of its best preserved monastic buildings is the Cistercian Romanesque church which holds one of the most impressive Portuguese collections of tiles Delft (glazed earthenware). Intensive archaeological excavations carried out in this monastery between 1998 and 2007 made it possible to identify the original monastic dependencies in the Middle Ages.