Evora – Wine country again, this time, Portugal

Evora is a pretty little town surrounded by hills and vineyards. It has a long and vibrant history of over 2,000 years - it was an important city in the Roman Empire, and was under the control of the Visigoths (around 600 to 700 AD), and the Moors (715 to 1165). There are ruins and arches from various periods in its history, including a Roman temple and arches, and many of the surviving buildings are medieval. It has narrow streets and scenic squares and fountains.

The town’s signature is white buildings with dark yellow trim:

This is Giraldo Square, the town’s main square. The fountain is from 1570.

Evora Cathedral:

Evora Cathedral was built from about 1250 to 1350. The 2 towers look different because they were built at different times, and there wasn’t an effort made to match them.

The main doorway is surrounded by carvings of the Apostles, by Master Pero:

Here is the interior of the cathedral:

Like many old cathedrals, this one has a cloister where the religious lived. The cloister was built along with the rest of the cathedral, around 1325-1350. The arches show Moorish influence.

A chapel in the cloister houses the tomb of Bishop D. Pedro, who was Bishop from 1321 – 1340.

Next, we climbed a tiny circular staircase up to the roof (well, that’s actually a picture of me going back down the circular stairs, but you get the idea). Pretty sure that these stairs without a railing around it in the middle of a publicly used rooftop wouldn’t meet code in the US, but we got used to this in Portugal.

View back at the cathedral rooftop & domes:

Views from the cathedral roof over the town:

The Bone Chapel (Capela dos Ossos)

So this church looks normal enough from the outside…

But the normalcy ends there. The walls and columns are entirely covered in… human bones. It was built in the 16^th Century by a Franciscan monk. The project was done to illustrate how fleeting our lives are: carved at the entrance of the chapel is “Nos ossos qe aqui estamos pelos vossos esperamos”, or “We bones, lying here bare, are awaiting yours.” Charming. Maybe effective in scaring people into living obedient lives. Frankly, I think that the disrespect of the remains of 5,000 people to make that point was excessive and morbid at best. We have seen “bone churches” like this in Eastern Europe as well.

Luckily, the chapel is attached to a normal church with some ornate chapels and interesting fixtures.

Medieval walls

As usual, we went to look at the medieval city walls and defensive towers. There are ruins of them all over the city, and they frame some modern roadways.

There were peacocks on some!

Aqueduct of Silver Water

This is not a Roman aqueduct, but rather one built in the 1530’s by King Joao III to provide water to the city. The aqueduct is 9km long. Vince is in the second picture to show the scale - how big these are.

This is interesting – at some point in history, people built their houses right into the structure of the aqueducts.

Roman Ruins

We keep running across evidence of the reach of the Roman empire and the incredible longevity of their architecture.

This is the incorrectly named “Diana Temple” – it was built in the 1^st Century AD, most likely to honor Emperor Augustus.

The University

This is the University of Evora, founded as a Jesuit university in 1559. As is typical in Portugal, the hallways (and classrooms!) are decorated in a characteristic tile.

Food

We found a great lunch deal at a local pizza place, for soup, pizza, and a drink (beer!) for 5 Euros, and we ate there every day (when you find a deal, you find a deal).

We went out for one nice dinner, at a place recommended in our Lonely Planet book. As always, the atmosphere was great in an old, barrel-ceilinged building and the food was delicious. An Italian meal with sangria?? Perfect.

Sintra, Plentiful Portuguese Palaces

About a 45 minute train ride from Lisbon is the town of Sintra, a traditional getaway for the nobility of Lisbon. It is a wonderful town nestled in wooded hills with ocean and valley views. It is quite a departure from the hustle and bustle of downtown Lisbon.

There are still a decent amount of tourists that flock there, but nothing like the major attractions in Lisbon. There is a charming little city center and some nice shops and restaurants. We could have easily spent a few more days here.

Getting off the train we came to a map of the city that was oriented in a way that didn’t make it very clear where we were supposed to go. After a little guesswork, we figure it out and headed towards the center of town. The first significant building we came across was the Town Hall, a fantastically constructed building. It was built between 1906 and 1909 on the site of the demolished Chapel of S. Sebastião.

From there, we took a nice walk along the main winding road along a shaded ridge overlooking a part of the town in the valley below. It is lined with various sculptures as well as an elaborate covered bench. Through the trees we also got our first glimpse of the Sintra National Palace.

The Sintra National Palace is a large medieval palace that sits in the heart of the city center. It was a royal residence of Portuguese Kings from the 15^th to 19^th Centuries. There are different styles in the palace due to the various editions and edits of the many inhabitants over the years. One thing they did share was their affinity towards tile. The town is quaint with just a few winding streets of shops, restaurants, and homes along and up a sloping hill (part of which you can see below in the view from the Palace).

This is the Swan's Room (Sala dos Cisnes) built in the Manueline style and is named after the swans painted on the ceiling.

There is a central courtyard that contains this overly-decorated covered porch.

This is the Magpies Room (Sala das Pegas). We learned from Wikipedia that it “relates to the story that the king John I was caught in the act of kissing a lady-in-waiting by his queen Philippa of Lancaster. To put a stop to all the gossip, he had the room decorated with as many magpies as were women at the court.”

This is a little private garden and behind is the incredible view from the palace.

This room (not sure the name) in one corner of the palace was wall to wall tiles of various scenes and an intensely decorated domed ceiling. This was one of the most impressive rooms.

Not to be outdone (even in its simplicity) is the kitchen. It includes all the original wood burning stoves and cooking equipment. On one side there is a giant oven with spits for cooking meat. There are two rooms that have massive cone shaped chimneys which can be seen from almost anywhere in the city. Below are pictures of them from the outside and inside.

After visiting the palace, we began are trek to another palace set up the mountain overlooking the town. The first part of the walk was along quiet streets overlooking the city below.

Quite unexpectedly, we passed by this fountain along the road and against the hillside. There was a sizeable group of people there with their water bottles filling up. Megan followed the locals lead by topping up our water bottle. We figured it was safe enough to drink.

The next part of the hike was through a steep wooded park. Above us for much of the way was the Castle of the Moors, which is a ruinous structure built between the 9^th and 10^th centuries. Unfortunately we only had a day to explore Sintra, so this one got skipped. We passed some old lower defensive walls and also this funny turnstile.

After paying our entrance fee and climbing up the mountain a little more, we came to the Palace of Pena. This palace is beyond absurd, and there are so many outrageous features. It was built in the mid-19^th century on the site of an old monastery. Unfortunately, no pictures were permitted inside, but there were several interesting rooms that include much of the original furnishings. Some notable ones were the bedrooms and the Great Hall used for receptions.

There are turrets, towers, walls, and a draw bridge, but none of the castle-like structures were built for defensive purposes.

One part of the palace is this passageway to the cliff-side of the palace. Under the main window jutting out is the Triton, a half-man, half-fish creature part of an allegorical gateway of Creation.

There is a catwalk around almost the entire exterior of the palace and you get some pretty incredible views of the area. On the hill across is the Castle of the Moors and to the left is the ocean.

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering through Park Pena, the grounds surrounding the palace. Along the undulating terrain were several different gardens, structures, and a lake.