Anta da Pedra dos Mouros

Also known as: Anta do Senhor da Serra

This dolmen is located on private property. I requested permission from the property owner to visit the anta, but never heard back. Therefore I can’t present a personal site visit.

This anta is one of the three Antas de Belas, which were declared National Monuments as a group in 1910. This one is located in the Quinta (“Farm” or “Estate”) do Senhor da Serra (“the Lord of the Mountain”), from which it gets its second name.

This anta (“dolmen”) was first identified by archaeologist Carlos Ribeiro in the late 1800s, but it had been known by locals beforehand.¹ As he excavated it, he was told that it had been looted in previous decades, and among the original artefacts recovered was also a coin from the 1700s. The anta was apparently a site of some pilgrimage by people in the area. One superstition was that ladies could promote their fertility by sliding down the largest stone.

Ribeiro described the anta as being heavily degraded, with only two orthostats seemingly intact (the largest one measured 5m above ground, 3.7m across), and several fragments in the area. It would have had a polygonal chamber, with no evidence of corridor or tumulus. One of the stones has anthropomorphic engravings – it is unclear from what era. The artefacts found in it are few (housed in the Geological Museum in Lisbon), but can – along with its shape – place it in the Late Chalcolithic, at the end of the 4th millennium BC, making it over 5,000 years old.

The photo below, from the 1980s, is under copyright – but is presented here under the concept of “fair use” since it is from a book² that is no longer in print.

By the 1950s, the smaller of the two remaining orthostats had fallen. Then it was reported in June 2010 that the main stone had been shattered. Police investigated but determined that it wasn’t vandalism but likely a result of construction explosions. A later report in the newspaper Público confirmed that the stone was destroyed because of explosive charges used in building a highway connection.

Other people have taken photos of the anta after its destruction, including this photo which is published on Wikimedia Commons:

There’s also an excellent 3D model⁴ of the anta, published on Sketchfab and embedded below:

Location

This anta is in the Lisbon district, in the municipality of Sintra. It’s in the parish of Queluz and Belas, just outside the town of Belas. It’s located on private land in the Quinta do Senhor da Serra.

Access

The anta is located on private land and it is not publicly accessible.

Links

• Article (in English) from Wikipedia
• Entry (in English) in the Megalithic Portal
• Blogpost (in Portuguese) about the destruction of the anta in 2010, by Cidadania Queluz
• Blogpost (in Portuguese) with before and after photos, by Despertar Belas
• Post with photos (in Portuguese) from his blog, Memórias das Pedras Talhas, by archaeologist António Carlos Silva
• Photograph (from 1975) from the Sintra Archives
• Description (in Portuguese) from Archaeologist’s Portal of the Directorate-General of Cultural Heritage
• Detailed entry (in Portuguese) of the Antas de Belas in the database of the Directorate-General of Cultural Heritage

Nearby

This is one of the three “Antas de Belas,” including also the Anta da Estria and Anta de Monte Abrãao. Both are very close by. The Anta de Agualva is also in the area, as is the Necrópole de Carenque.

Sources

1. Rui Boaventura, and João Luís Cardoso. “Carlos Ribeiro (1813-1882) E as Antas de Belas: Um Contributo Para a História Da Ciência Em Portugal No Século XIX.” Estudos Arqueológicos de Oeiras, vol. 21, no. 21, Jan. 2014, pp. 35–80, www.researchgate.net/publication/289532409_Carlos_Ribeiro_1813-1882_e_as_antas_de_Belas_um_contributo_para_a_Historia_da_Ciencia_em_Portugal_no_seculo_XIX_-_Carlos_Ribeiro_1813-1882_and_the_dolmens_of_Belas_a_contribution_for_the_History_of_Sc.   ↩︎
2. Roteiros Da Arqueologia Portuguesa 1: Lisboa E Arredores. Instituto Português do Património Cultural, Departamento de Arqueologia, 1986 ↩︎
3. Roundtheworld. “PedrasdosMouros2.Jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, 14 Feb. 2019, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PedrasdosMouros2.jpg. Accessed 4 Mar. 2025. Licenced CC BY-SA 4.0 . ↩︎
4. Câmara, Luís. Dólmen – Anta Da Pedra Dos Mouros (CNS-11301), 16 Jan. 2024, sketchfab.com/3d-models/dolmen-anta-da-pedra-dos-mouros-cns-11301-d693cb37f5374ffca2eb0aedde662ee0. Accessed 4 Mar. 2025. ↩︎