Frontier village of medieval foundation, with charter granted in 1228, Sortelha will only lose this municipality status with the administrative reorganization made by the liberal state in the century. XIX. The old village constitutes a medieval urban space (13th-14th centuries), which finds its essential matrix in the defensive needs and in the military organization of the space, greatly altered with the interventions that occurred in the Manueline period (16th century) and in the six hundred. Such a structure is still observable today, because, once the defensive demands that are at the origin and subsequent use of the medieval castle disappeared, its population gradually preferred to settle in a suburb, in a more fertile and less rugged area, thus not suffering the space within. walls considerable adaptation to the living conditions of the most recent centuries.