The monastery of the Order of Cîteaux was founded in 1295 by King Dinis. Legend has it that D. Dinis took this initiative as a form of payment of a promise made to St. Louis when, on a hunt in the Alentejo, he was surprised by a bear. Before the apparition of the saint, the king regained forces and managed to neutralize the enormous animal.
The choice of the place for D. Dinis to fulfill his promise focused on a property of the King at the end of Lisbon, Odivelas, where the "Quinta das Flores" was located. This area enjoyed excellent natural resources, namely: fertile soils, a water course, and a morphology that formed a natural shelter for crops. The monastery was intended to receive a female Cistercian community, and the choice of the place was intended to ensure the nuns' subsistence and to ensure their modesty, and cultivated fields were set up next to the monastery.
By the will of D. Dinis, the monastery was subject to the supervision of the abbots of Alcobaça, who visited him regularly.
The primitive construction, in Gothic style, began in 1295 and had like architects the masters Antão Martins and Afonso Martins; received in the seventeenth century the intervention of Br. João Turriano, a Benedictine monk, the chief engineer of the kingdom. Due to the damage caused by the earthquake of 1755, the initial gothic construction remains only a few sections of the cloisters and the head of the church - with its south side portal - consisting of the apse and lateral chapels, with vaults of bevelled ribs. The monastery reflects the stylistic diversity of the successive interventions to which it was submitted, presenting, along with the typically Gothic elements of the initial construction, others of Manueline, baroque and neoclassical characteristics.
In 1325 D. Dinis died and, according to his will, he was buried in the monastery that represents perhaps the most emblematic architectural work of his reign.
Between 1900 and 2015 the Institute of Odivelas worked in the monastery.
In 2017 the Army will yield the monastery to the Camera of Odivelas.
