It is part of the complex of defensive structures of the Fort of São João Baptista, that crossed-fire with the Fort of São Sebastião in the defense of the Bay of Angra.

The redoubt was constructed following the Portuguese succession crisis of 1580 by the Corregedor of the Açores, Ciprião de Figueiredo e Vasconcelos, from the defensive plans of Tommaso Benedetto (in 1567), after attacks by French corsair Pierre Bertrand de Montluc in Funchal(October 1566), and the 1566 attack and defense of Angra.

Francisco Ferreira Drummond, registered that: In the 1595 engraving "A Cidade de Angra na Ilha Iesu Xpo da Terceira que esta em 30 Graos", by Jan Huygen van Linschoten, the fort was depicted.

In the context of the installation of the Captaincy-General of the Azores, its state was reported in the 1767 dispatch::"17 — Redoubt of Santo António.

"[2] Sousa (1995), in 1822, while writing of the port of Angra referred: "...and [the point of] Santo António in the west, [where there is a castle] of the same force [40 pieces]..."[3] By the 20th century, little of the fort survived; segments of the walls and bunker are the only elements of this redoubt that remain on Monte Brasil.