Coimbra's lower town and the Mondego: a self-guided walk

By Alleytale

From the royal monastery down to the river and across it

The Mondego shaped this side of Coimbra: it flooded a monastery out of its home, and it has been crossed by a stone bridge, an iron bridge and now by two modern ones.

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The stops

1. 1Mosteiro de Santa Cruz

   Founded in 1131 outside Coimbra's walls, this was the most important monastic house of the early Portuguese monarchy. The tombs of the first two kings, Afonso Henriques and Sancho I, lie in the main chapel in a work by Nicolau Chanterene, and the main portal, built between 1522 and 1525, is the most emblematic piece of the whole ensemble. Saint Anthony of Lisbon, better known as Saint Anthony of Padua, was one of the canons here before he left to become a Franciscan.

   

2. 2Igreja de Santiago

   This Romanesque church on Praça do Comércio was built between the late 12th and early 13th centuries, although a document shows that building on the site began before 957. The capitals of its front portal carry plant and animal motifs, some of them derived from the Old Cathedral. In 1861 the widening of Visconde da Luz street cost the church much of its apse and main chapel.

   

3. 3Arco de Almedina

   This was the main gate into the walled town. It may go back to Count Sesnando Davides, who conquered Coimbra in 1064, and it was reworked many times, with its present look possibly the result of a remodelling under King Manuel I in the early 16th century. On the inside, a frieze carries a relief of the Virgin and Child between two coats of arms.

   

4. 4Ponte de Santa Clara

   The present bridge opened on 30 October 1954. It replaced an iron bridge begun in 1873 and opened in 1875, which had itself replaced a stone bridge dating from 1513. Its engineers, Edgar Cardoso and António Franco e Abreu, also designed Porto's São João and Arrábida bridges.

   

5. 5Monastery of Santa Clara-a-Velha

   Queen Elizabeth refounded this monastery in 1314, and its Gothic church was consecrated in 1330. The Mondego flooded it so often that King John IV ordered the nuns out in 1647, and the last of them left in 1677 for a new monastery on the hill. River mud then covered the ruins until an archaeological campaign that began in 1995 cleared them, and they turned out to be remarkably well preserved.

   

6. 6Pedro e Inês footbridge

   This footbridge opened in 2007 and, at 180 metres long, was the city's first. Its two cantilevered walkways are displaced so that each supports the other, which gives it the local nickname of the bridge that does not meet. The balustrade is clear glass in blue, pink, green and yellow, and the bridge is named for the ill-fated affair between Prince Pedro and the lady-in-waiting Inês de Castro.

   

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