~ Fátima and the Region ~

Fatima, the largest parish in the municipality of Ourém district of Santarem, is an important pilgrimage center for the Catholic world.

It is located about 11 km from Ourém, 25 km from Leiria, 120 km from Lisbon, 180km from Porto and is approximately 300 meters above sea level, right in the limestone Extremaduran. The formations of the Serra de Aire and lamps give it a barren landscape, a rocky soil and limestone where only the oak, Portuguese oak, the arbutus, the sanguinho or zanguinho, fig and olive trees, able to withstand the adverse weather conditions present and territory.

The name Fatima has topographic Moorish since Fatima was the name of the daughter of Muhammad, the great prophet of Islam Today, Fatima indicates the central town, seat of the parish of the same name that still retains remnants of its rurality in tanks, mills wind and other elements of the architecture made of stone and lime, as can be appreciated in the villages of Aljustrel, Eira da Pedra, mulberry, broom, Boleiros, Ramil, Cage, Quarry, Mature Sick and Moita, among others, all worth visiting.

The Fatima Parish was founded in 1568, after his breakdown of the Collegiate of Ourém. Until 1917, Fatima was born an unknown village in a field, focused on grazing and agriculture without irrigation. It was the remarkable religious phenomena of the Apparitions of Our Lady to three shepherd children that led to the establishment of nations that have embarked on the retail, restaurants and hotels, in response to requests from pilgrims, abandoning the traditional subsistence agriculture in favor of the new jobs emerging.

Fatima was raised to town in 1977 and the city in 1997 and currently has about 10,000 inhabitants. Serves residents of all social facilities befitting a city, but also tourists and pilgrims, with quality accommodation and restaurants, museums and shops, and an excellent road network, where A1 is the main entrance. 

The Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima, located in the Cova da Iria, today has not only a wide range of buildings as well as a large outdoor enclosure with an area of ​​86,400 m2, which holds about 300 000 people. The center of activity is beyond the Chapel of the Apparitions, Basilica whose first stone was blessed on May 13, 1928 by the Archbishop of Évora, D. Manuel da Conceição Santos.

The Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima also has the church dedicated to Holy Trinity with 8,633 seats and 40,000 m², a work of authorship of the Greek architect Alexandros Tombazis. It was inaugurated on 12 October 2007, the Secretary of State of the Vatican, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone on the occasion of the 90th. Anniversary of the apparitions.

This is the fourth largest Catholic church in the world in capacity, having been fully paid with gifts of pilgrims over the years. The decor is inspired by Byzantine art and Orthodox. The plant is circular on the outside and square inside, there are 12 side doors (one dedicated to each of the Apostles and a large central door, the door of Christ.

 Also in the Sanctuary are to highlight the Great Holm, the Monument to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which stands in the center of the plaza, the Chapel of Lausperene, the Monument which houses a piece of the Berlin Wall and, in addition to the Avenue D. José Alves Correia da Silva, the Paul VI Pastoral Center.
2 km from the Sanctuary of Fatima, the parish seat, you can visit the Parish Church where the seers were baptized and the cemetery where Francisco and Jacinta were buried.

You can also visit the House of the Shepherds and the Ethnographic Museum in Aljustrel and Valinhos, the Monument to Our Lady, the Loca do Anjo, the Way of the Cross and Calvary. The north side of the Sanctuary, visit the Wax Museum and the Museum of Fatima Apparitions 1917, on the south side, the Museum of Sacred Art and Ethnology of Fatima and Museum of the life of Christ.

The three children
About two kilometers from Fatima, is Aljustrel, the small village where they were born three children, to whom Our Lady appeared in 1917. Two miles west of Fatima, extends to the Cova da Iria, where Our Lady appeared to the visionaries five times, for the first time May 13, 1917, when a grazing flock in the Cova da Iria. Lucia de Jesus, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, 10, 9 and 7, respectively, saw an oak tree on a light involving a lady who spoke to them asking them to pray and invite them to come back the following month. To the west, near Aljustrel, on a hill where the prevailing cultivation of olive trees, rises to the Cabeço, tiny cluster of rocks where, once in spring and another in autumn 1916, the angel appeared to three shepherd children.

Among the Cabeço Aljustrel and, in a small valley called Valinhos, found the place where the Virgin also appeared once to the three shepherd children on 19 August 1917.