The town of Tomar in Portugal was the headquarters first of the Templars, and later of the Order of Christ. The castle, known as the Convento de Cristo, still exists today, and is well worth a visit. There are a number of good sites with pictures and information on Tomar:
The nearby Church of Santa Maria do Olival was elected during the Portuguese Discoveries as the mother church of all the churches of Africa, Asia and the Americas. The original construction remains in the beautiful Gothic facade, marked by the Signum Salmonis, the true mark of the Knights Templars counterpoised on an enormous rosette. The church also houses the famous pantheon where 22 Master Templars were buried. [TGT]
"Tomar, the second templar province in the world, was an important site of mystical, spiritual and esoteric irradiation. There on the rose window of the principal portical of the church of Santa Maria do Olival - where Gauldim Pais the founder of the castle and of the city of Tomar is buried - one can find a five pointed star inscribed on an open five petal rose. The relationship between the rose and the cross is very clear here, keeping with the similarity of the one which was recently found in the interior of the castle and which piqued, at last, the curiosity of our official exoteric historians. One begins thusly to relate all the extant symbolism between the Rose and the Cross.[RD]
The Feast of the Coronation of the Emperor of the Holy Spirit, an ancient and intriguing religious feast with connections to the Order of Christ, is celebrated in Tomar.
The castle was built in 1160 by Gualdim Pais, master of the Templars in Portugal, and in the same year the town of Tomar came into being. [More detail]
The Templars built an eight-sided chapel, or Charola, in the midst of the fortifications, where, rumour has it, they initiated new knights on horseback. From the Castle at Tomar, the Templars rode out to fight against the Moors, and in 1190 they were besieged by the King of Morocco. [More detail]
After the dissolution of the Templars and the foundation of the Order of Christ, the new order eventually made Tomar their headquarters. Prince Henry the Navigator, as governor of the Order, had quarters at the Convento do Christo, and he had two new courtyards built for the brothers - the Washing Cloister and the Cemetery Cloister.
In the early sixteenth century, the Convento was extended greatly, illustrating the power and riches of the order at that time. Its chief glories are the the church and chapter house, built by John de Castilho in the exotic Manuelino idiom with luxurious carving - curiously nautical as well as oriental in feeling (presumably emphasising the order's connection with nautical exploration, as Tomar is inland). Motifs of stone ropes and sails, bosses and spirals like sea shells, all with a quality of marine encrustation, are repeated throughout on walls, pillars and window tracery. It is 'perhaps the supreme architectural achievement of military Christianity'. [MoW]