Silves Cathedral stands in Silves in the Algarve of southern Portugal, on the site of a mosque from the Moorish period. Christian forces definitively reconquered Silves in 1242. Construction is believed to have begun under King Afonso III, as the seat of a newly founded Algarve diocese. In the 1440s King Afonso V gave the work a major boost, producing the apse with three chapels, the transept and the main portal by the 1470s. The three-aisled nave was completed in the early sixteenth century.
The style is mostly Gothic. The apse, windows and main portal are red sandstone against whitewashed walls. The eastern chapels and transept have Gothic rib vaulting.
The 1755 earthquake destroyed part of the nave, and the facade was rebuilt with Rococo volutes. The bishopric moved to Faro in 1577. It became a national monument in 1922.
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