This is the oldest thing in Óbidos you can put your hand on, and it stands on a small square off the main street that most visitors never turn into. Father Pêro Fernandes, vicar of Lourinhã and a beneficiary of Lisbon cathedral, founded it in 1331 as a family funerary chapel. The municipality calls it one of the most significant examples of Gothic architecture in the town, and notes that its architectural motifs resemble those at the abbey of Alcobaça, 40 km up the road.
The portal is the reason to stop: an ogival arch of three archivolts on columns with foliage capitals, with a Gothic inscription cut above it. It is small, it is not restored to a shine, and it is 1331.
Inside — when inside is possible — the single room is covered by a ribbed vault and holds three tombs set in ogival arcosolia, the arched recesses cut into the wall. One of them has a sword carved on it. The chapel was built to hold the remains of nobles and knights, which is very likely why it is dedicated to St Martin of Tours, a Roman cavalry officer before he was a bishop. Two further medieval tombs are set into the outside of the building, one of them carved with heraldic shields — and those you can see whenever you like, because they are on the street.
The chapel passed to the Visconde de Sacavém in 1913 and now belongs to the municipality. It is normally empty and is opened irregularly for exhibitions and for a Christmas crib. No official body publishes opening hours for it — not the municipality, not Turismo de Portugal — so treat the interior as a bonus and the exterior as the visit.
It faces the church of São Pedro across the square, which keeps fragments of a Gothic portal in its façade but was heavily damaged in 1755 and rebuilt; the painter Josefa de Óbidos asked to be buried in it, and nobody has ever established where under the floor she lies.
