Faro Cathedral is the Roman Catholic cathedral of the Diocese of Faro in Portugal. According to tradition, an early Paleo-Christian basilica stood on the site and was later used as a mosque under Moorish rule. After the Reconquest in 1249 by Afonso III the mosque was converted to a Christian church, and a mother church was rebuilt soon afterward. The present cathedral has origins in the middle of the thirteenth century and was consecrated in the late thirteenth century.
King John III ordered the seat of the diocese moved from Silves to Faro, and it has been the seat since 1540. The Earl of Essex destroyed it in 1596.
The style mixes Gothic, Baroque and Portuguese Plain Style. It has a bell tower and an eighteenth-century organ by Johann Heinrich Hulenkampf. Outside is an ossuary shaped like an altar. It is a National Monument of Portugal.
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