Built on one of the most prominent hills of the city (Monte Fragoso), the original building that housed the monks of the Order of St. Francis, turned south and all the other conventual rooms and facilities were facing east, i.e. the Terreiro do Paço.

The area of the Convent of St. Francis was so large that people called it “the City of St. Francis”.  Over the years, the building was successively expanded and integrated into the city after the construction, in the middle of the 14th century, of the “Medieval Wall” ordered by king Fernando I.

Besides being a conventual house, it also served as a hospital unit, and it was in its rich library that the Royal Courts met several times throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. In the first half of the 18th century it suffered two terrible fires (1707 and 1741), having been practically devastated by the 1755 earthquake.