About me, and how this site is put together
I am Inês Salgueiro and I walk people up the hill to the Convento de Cristo most weeks. The operator charges about fifteen euros at the door and the platform’s ticket listing charges the same, which makes booking ahead a free decision: the place is held, it cancels free, and nothing costs more than it would at the gate. So this site answers the questions that are left — what a guide adds to that ticket, and which of the eighteen listings actually gets you through the door.
What I do here
I read the listings. All eighteen of them, end to end, including the know-before-you-go sections nobody scrolls to, and I quote what they say about admission in their own words rather than summarising it. That matters more on this monument than on anything else I have written about: ten listings put the ticket in the price, three bracket it as “(if option selected)”, two say outright that you buy your own, and one of those two has inclusions that read the opposite way round. The whole comparison is on all eighteen listings.
Every written review on these listings is read here, which is 108 of them, and I print them as they were typed. Nothing is corrected for spelling and nothing is moved to a listing it was not left on. The reviews hub opens with a plain summary of that sample, including its weaker points.
The history, and why this site keeps saying “disputed”
The claim that makes this place worth the journey is that the Templars were not destroyed here. Everywhere else in Europe the order was arrested, tried and then dissolved outright by papal bull in 1312; in Portugal the king declined to persecute them, obtained a new order from the pope in 1319, and gave it the same castles. You can walk from a round Templar oratory of 1160 to a window carved when Portuguese ships were crossing the Atlantic under that order’s cross, in one building, in an afternoon.
Whether that amounts to “the Templars survived” is genuinely argued over by historians, and both sides are set out here. Two documented facts cut against the simplest version: the new order’s first Master had been Master of Avis rather than a Templar, and its first seat was Castro Marim in the Algarve, not Tomar. Both are on the Order of Christ, along with the argument in full. There are nine live disagreements running through this site and each one is set out, including what the Charola was modelled on, who carved the Chapter House window, and how many cloisters there are.
Four principles behind these pages
The ticket listing rates 3.9, and all ten of its written reviews are five stars. What its own reviewers raise is on its page.
Tour operators are not named on this site. There are small businesses behind these listings and one bad morning is not a verdict on a company. Where a reviewer names their own guide, that stays as written, because it is theirs.
For what is closed, the operator is the source to check. Restoration is under way, the operator says areas including the South Terrace and parts of the Main Cloister are restricted, and the scope of that changes faster than a page does. Visiting points you at the operator instead.
Prices move, so the writing uses approximations. Approximations in the writing, exact figures in the booking widget, which prices itself against the platform in real time.
Where I am, and what I know best
Tomar. The convent is at the top of the hill above the town and the station is about 1.3 km below it, uphill all the way, which is the single most useful thing anybody can tell you before you arrive with a suitcase. I know this building, the Templars in Portugal, the Order of Christ and Manueline carving. For the train journey, see getting there.
If something here is wrong, or was right and has stopped being right, tell me. How the site is paid is set out on the disclosure page.