Convento de São José is a sober building from the first half of the 18th century. It was built with the purpose of serving the gathering of women and the reception of children, having worked for about a century under the guidance of a religious order of begging nuns. It is from that time that the wheel of the exposed, which can still be seen at the entrance. After the extinction of religious orders (1834), the building was adapted to a girls’ education college and guided by a group of Dominican nuns, functioning until the establishment of the Republic.
At the end of the 80’s of the 20th century, the municipality carried out the restoration and adaptation of the building to, from 1993, become one of the poles of Lagoa’s cultural activity. Its most emblematic elements are, in addition to the wheel, the lookout tower, with hinged windows, the chapel, whose altar bears an image of St. Joseph, the cloister, in the center of which is an octagonal cistern. Note to the garden menhir, from an archeological site in the Porches area, dated between 5000 and 4000 years before our era.