about the place
Leiria lies in central-western Portugal, on a plain crossed by the river Lis, with the Pinhal de Leiria framing the landscape to the west. The city grew up around a castle ordered to be reinforced by D. Afonso Henriques in 1135, when the territory was still the frontier of a kingdom yet to be built. In 1142, the Municipality received its first royal charter, and the creation of the diocese, on 22 May 1545, consolidated Leiria as the religious and administrative centre of a vast region.
