Serra de Bussaco

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Serra de Bussaco, (also Buçaco or Busaco) is a mountain range on the frontiers of Portugal, formerly included in the province of Beira. The highest point in the range is the Ponta de Bussaco (1795 feet), which commands a magnificent view over the Serra da Estrella, the Mondego valley and the Atlantic Ocean.

Towards the close of the 19th century the Serra de Bussaco became one of the regular halting-places for foreign, and especially for British, tourists, on the overland route between Lisbon and Porto. Its hotel, built in the Manueline style encloses the buildings of a secularized Carmelite monastery, founded in 1268. The convent woods, now a royal domain, have long been famous for their cypress, plane, evergreen oak, cork and other forest trees, many of which have stood for centuries and attained an immense size. A bull of Pope Gregory XV (1623), anathematizing trespassers and forbidding women to approach, is inscribed on a tablet at the main entrance; another bull, of Pope Urban VIII (1643), threatens with excommunication any person harming the trees.

In 1873 a monument was erected, on the southern slopes of the Serra, to commemorate the Battle of Buçaco, in which the French, under Marshal Masséna, were defeated by the British and Portuguese, under Lord Wellington, on 27 September 1810.

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.