Chelas Convent - General Army Archives

Also known as Convento de São Félix e Santo Adrião de Chelas, this female convent is one of the most ancient monastic buildings in Lisbon. It is located at the confluence of the Chelas and Montanha Valleys, whose waters converge to the Tagus River along the Estrada de Chelas. The establishment of the convent organized a landscape with farms connected by lanes, whose material remains persist to this day among a dispersion of kitchen gardens that confirm the area’s natural aptitude for agricultural production of the area, with its fertile soils and abundance of water. Human presence here may be traced back to a Visigoth occupation over prior Roman structures, that evolved through successive interventions since the Low Middle Ages. Among the build-up of Romanesque, Gothic and Manueline elements, stand out an extraordinary portal and the 16th-century galilee. After the extinction of the monastic orders, a Smokeless Gun Powder Factory was established here and shared this compound with the General Army Archives until the 1950s.