Marvão, Cisterna

Just like the small cistern, this one is also shrouded in some mystery, and it is said in the village that it may have had a different function in the past, namely a religious one. We don't think so, since, below the normal level of the ground, only stores are built, almost always for water. However, in a military document from 1861, it is said, without anything being proved, that inside the Castle there is an armoury, a cistern (formerly the Mosque of the Arabs) and some warehouses (see Military Historical Archive, 3rd Division, 9th Section, Box 51, Number 17 (1861). It was in fact necessary to build a large cistern to collect rainfall and supply Marvão, which could only get water that way. According to the Parochial Memoirs mentioned in the previous note, a well opened in Terreiro, during a great drought in 1712 or 1713, never had enough water to make a fountain run and ended up being blocked
(MACHADO, J. Liberata and GORJÃO, Sérgio, art. cit.) The cistern presents, in the extrasoil, a terrace with 3 skylights (today covered) and a system of 8 culverts for rainwater collection. It was, and still is, supplied by a levada of rainwater that, from inside the first enclosure of the castle, falls into the cistern after a recently built manhole. Before this box was built, there was another (1.10 m x 0.60 m), already on the outside of the cistern, into which the levada was led and then channelled by gutter into one of the culverts. The water collection system in the first castle enclosure consisted of various gutters, which even took advantage of the rainwater from the roofs. As regards its date, we believe it dates from the late Middle Ages or early modern times...