Reduto dos Dois Paus: A Portuguese Redoubt on Monte Brasil
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Portugal
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- Eras represented
- Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Portuguese
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Fort
On this page5 sections
History
Reduto dos Dois Paus is a Portuguese redoubt in Portugal, on Monte Brasil at Angra do Heroísmo, built as part of the fortified defenses of the Fortress of São João Baptista. A redoubt was a small, usually enclosed defensive work intended to strengthen a larger system or protect a particular position. The fort belongs to the sixteenth-century period of Portuguese military planning in the Azores, although its precise construction date remains uncertain and it is also associated with 1543.
Planning the Azores defenses
In 1543, Bartolomeu Ferraz, a Portuguese military planner, presented King John III with recommendations for fortifying the Azores. John III ruled Portugal from 1521 to 1557, when the islands served as an important waypoint in trans-Atlantic commerce between the Indies and America. The proposed defenses reflected the military importance of protecting maritime routes and island ports.
The Monte Brasil fortification
On 5 March 1567, Tommaso Benedetto, a military engineer involved in Portuguese fortification planning, submitted a coastal-defense proposal to the Portuguese Crown. The plan included a fort on Monte Brasil, after which the Crown began constructing the Fort of Dois Paus to protect the port of Dois Paus-Portinho Novo. The relationship between this work and the date 1543 is not fully resolved, since the fort’s construction date is uncertain.
The origin of the name Dois Paus is also uncertain. Its literal meaning is “two sticks” or “two clubs,” but the historical reason for the name is not established.
Ruins in the eighteenth century
By 1767, the structure was described as lying in ruins on the volcanic cone of Monte Brasil. This condition marked the later history of a fortification that had formed part of the defenses of the Fortress of São João Baptista.
Remains
The remains of Reduto dos Dois Paus occupy the Monte Brasil peninsula in the civil parish of Sé, within the municipality of Angra do Heroísmo on Terceira Island in the Azores. The fortification was built with basalt and tuff, volcanic materials associated with the island’s landscape. Its surviving fabric is ruinous and lies on the volcanic cone of Monte Brasil, where the small defensive work formed part of the wider fortified system.
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