Castle · Šilb
Ḥiṣn de Paderne
Today: Castelo de Paderne, Paderne (Albufeira)
- Place
- Šilb (Silves)
- Kind
- Castle
- Built
- 12th century
- What remains
- Ruins
- Visiting
- Open to visit
A rural ḥiṣn of rammed earth on a bend of the Quarteira river, one of the finest examples of rammed-earth military building in the peninsula. Its date depends on the source: the Portuguese article gives the 11th or 12th century with mid 12th-century features, while the English one makes it a Berber work of the late 12th. Portugal took it in 1248; the walls survive, with an albarrana tower before the bent entrance and the ruins of a chapel and two cisterns, on a marked footpath.