Our Lady of Cape Espichel

The sanctuary of the end of the earth · Sesimbra (Setúbal)

At the end of Cape Espichel, on the cliffs facing the Atlantic, a great Baroque sanctuary rises with long hosts for the pilgrims. The "cirios" came to him, with great voting cirios from all over the Lisbon region.

Origin and history

Tradition tells that, around the XIV-XV centuries, two elders saw in a dream a Lady who asked them to go to Cape Espichel, where they found an image of the Virgin with the Child coming from the sea and deposited on the rock. That rock, the "Pedra Mua," retains fossils of dinosaur that ancient piety interpreted as the traces of the mule that would have ascended the Virgin from the sea. The Ermida da Memória commemorates the place.

Historically, the cult has been documented since the XV-XVI centuries. In the 17th and 18th centuries, with the favor of the monarchy, the sanctuary reached great splendor: the church was extended and the long wings of hosts were raised that flank the explanade to welcome the "cirios," the Romeries organized by parishes and co-fradies of Lisbon and the surrounding. It went down in the 19th century and today is a great historical set and a place of local veneration and romance.

The interpretation of fossil prints as those of the "mule of Our Lady" belongs to the devotional and legendary imaginary, not to science.