The construction of the convent lasted for over forty years, with the royal patronage of the Queens Leonor grantee City and Manuel I woman, from 1519 to 1525 and of Queen Catherine, wife of King João III from 1529 to 1550. The most active phase of the yard, had the architect Afonso Pires and from 1561 to 1564, under the Diogo Pires orders. The convent is to highlight the Renaissance style, with a Manueline church and baroque dome.

Extinguished the religious orders in 1834, the convent passed to the hand of individuals, including having served facilities of a factory of cork stoppers, in the early twentieth century.

However a National Monument, the town bought the building in 1960 for installation of the Library and Municipal Museum.

Despite the looting carried out by British troops of the Earl of Essex (who also attempted against other buildings in Faro in 1596) and the 1755 earthquake is one of the best examples of the first Renaissance in the Algarve.

Runs along the southern Meseta in east-west direction, near the Spanish city of Badajoz, take the south direction to the mouth. The Guadiana border between Portugal and Spain from the river Chança to the mouth. In the section between the Caia river and the creek Cuncos the border is not demarcated due to the border dispute of Olivenza, between the river of Olivenza and the creek Táliga.

The Guadiana is navigable until Mértola a distance of 68 km. In his Portuguese course was built Alqueva dam, in the Alentejo region, which created the largest artificial lake in Europe.

Its main tributaries are, on the right bank: Záncara, Cigüela, Bullaque, Degebe and the Ribeira Vascão. The left bank tributaries are the Guadiana Alto, Azuer, Jabalón, Zújar, Matachel, Ardila and the Chança.

The Romans called it Anas (“ducks”), to which the Moors joined wadi (the Arabic word for “river”) and then the Wadi Ana, through the Portuguese as Ouadiana and later still to Odiana. However, since the sixteenth century, for spanish influence, it was gaining ground Guadiana form (cognate other Arab names designating rivers and passed to Castilian with the initial form guad as Guadalquivir, Guadalete, Guadalajara or Guadarrama), and today days, the established way.