The Cowherds' Vegetable Garden
Oral tradition collected and published by the Portal Ponto de Vista in 2017 points to the beginning of it all at the Horta dos Vaqueiros, in Viana do Alentejo. According to accounts passed down from generation to generation, a rich farmer named Martim Vaqueiro faced an inexplicable nocturnal enigma. His animals would abandon their shelter and return in the morning with the gates firmly closed, a prodigy that prompted the appearance of the Virgin in dreams.
This popular narrative founded the mythical matrix of worship in the Central Alentejo region, linking the religious foundation to a peasant miracle. However, academic research presented at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa in 2013 demonstrated that the construction of these mythical-imaginary Marian legends functioned mainly as a structuring instrument to legitimize and expand 18th-century Catholic pilgrimages.
While the popular imagination fixed the story of Martim Vaqueiro, the administrative reality of the municipality was shaped through stone markers and royal decrees. The Castle of Viana do Alentejo, which centralizes the defensive and religious structure of the town, was ordered to be built by King D. Dinis in the year 1313, establishing the military axis that would precede the creation of the region's great baroque sanctuaries.
The Roman stone and the clay pot
A second legendary variant is associated with the site, engraved in a Latin verse inscription on the portal of the Sanctuary of Nossa Senhora de Aires. According to records consulted in local monographs and collecting blogs in 2020, the sacred image was found by a farmer inside a clay pot while plowing the field shortly after the expulsion of the Moors from that Alentejo parcel.
The materiality of the temple, however, departs from the rustic simplicity of the clay pot, resting on much older structures. Local archaeological studies identified by the Portugal Notável portal in 2026 proved that the Sanctuary of Nossa Senhora d'Aires rests on an ancient Roman vicus from the 2nd century AD, cleverly utilizing Roman stones and votive altars in the structural composition of the churchyard.
This constructive longevity contrasts with the chronology of the town and shows how Viana do Alentejo concentrated successive civilizational strata. Excavations reveal that the subsoil guards fragments of Roman brick and reused ashlar blocks, transforming the religious courtyard into a stone archive with centuries of history documented by archaeologists.
The charter of King D. José I and the baroque
The most obvious reading would assume that the foundation legend of Nossa Senhora de Aires described by oral tradition has direct medieval records that would prove its exact antiquity. However, official documents and historical research indicate that the written narrative and the monumentalization of the cult only assumed formal expression in the 18th century, driven by elites from Évora and very concrete economic interests.
The institutional turning point occurred when the Vianense Senate obtained a charter from King D. José I on September 27, 1751, signed by the Marquis of Pombal, as attested by Virtual Museum records in 1804. This royal document had the fundamental purpose of instituting the chartered fair linked to the sanctuary, transforming a modest local cult into a pole of mercantile and religious attraction of regional scope.
To accommodate the growing flow of pilgrims and fairgoers, the project of the current Sanctuary of Nossa Senhora d'Aires was developed between 1743 and 1760 by the priest-architect João Baptista, replacing an earlier temple dating back to the 16th century. Expansion works took place continuously until 1792, with the second solemn consecration taking place on May 13, 1804, a date that fixed the baroque physiognomy visible in the temple.
The grandeur of national heritage
The grandeur of the 18th-century and medieval construction effort consolidated Viana do Alentejo as one of the most relevant heritage cores in Central Alentejo. The architectural ensemble of the Sanctuary of Nossa Senhora de Aires was officially classified as a National Monument in 2012, according to Wikipedia records and cultural guardianship, consecrating the historical importance of the baroque temple.
Just a few kilometers from the sanctuary, the urban core of the town is dominated by the medieval castle, whose fortified complex was officially classified as a National Monument by a decree published on June 23, 1910, according to the Directorate-General for Cultural Heritage and the Municipality of Viana do Alentejo. The diamond-shaped polygonal wall stands out in Portuguese military architecture for displaying cylindrical towers at the vertices and doors decorated with Manueline elements.
Compared to other fortifications in the region, the Vianense castle stands out for the harmony of its parade ground and the imposing nature of its regional granite and marble ashlars. The town thus occupies a singular position in the transition between the late 16th-century Gothic and the baroque expansion that redrew the agrarian and religious landscape from the mid-18th century onwards.
The present and the echo of the stones
The municipality of Viana do Alentejo preserves in its flat and open landscape the material vestiges of these secular transitions between the sacred and political power. The vast square of Nossa Senhora de Aires, paved and flanked by the old pilgrim quarters, continues to be the main stage for the large popular gatherings that keep alive the memory of the ancient chartered fairs granted by the Crown in 1751.
The preservation of these monuments is ensured by conservation interventions coordinated by the local authority and state guardianship, in a territory facing the demographic challenges common to the Alentejo interior. The walls erected by order of King D. Dinis in 1313 continue to encircle the white houses, while the Roman stones from the 2nd century AD remain embedded in the churchyard of the baroque sanctuary.
Unlike the ephemeral legends of Martim Vaqueiro's oxen or the clay pots hidden in the heath, the historical documentation kept in archives and Pombaline charters offers the exact measure of the construction of this territory. Viana do Alentejo thus remains a living laboratory where oral ethnography and monumental stone continue to dialogue under the open sky of the Alentejo.