Estremoz: tiles, marble and a queen on the castle hill: a self-guided walk

By Alleytale

White marble, blue tiles and Queen Saint Isabel in Estremoz

Estremoz is known around the world for its marble, and it turns up all along the way: in a medieval tomb, in a cloister's columns, in a pillory, in the corners of an old jail, in the columns of a church and in a statue of the queen who died in the castle.

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The stops

1. 1Berardo Tile Museum

   The Berardo Tile Museum fills the Palácio Tocha, a palace whose interior walls carry late Baroque and Rococo azulejos. It holds one of the largest private collections of tiles in Portugal, and its main exhibition, 800 Years of Tile History, follows the story of the Portuguese azulejo.

   

2. 2Palácio Reynolds

   Roberto Rafael Reynolds commissioned this house in 1905 and lived here with his family, and it was finished in 1906. The style is traditional Portuguese with a Sevillian influence, and the inner courtyard has Muslim-style elements like those of the Casa Alentejo in Lisbon. It now belongs to the Army's Cavalry Regiment 3, which uses it as its officers' club.

   

3. 3Igreja de São Francisco

   The Franciscans' church went up in the reign of Afonso III on the site of an older hermitage of São Bento, and his coat of arms is on the keystone of the chancel arch. A Manueline cross stands in front of the door. Inside, the Esteves Gatuz tomb is carved in Estremoz marble, with a squire on the lid and falconry scenes on its sides, and the Chapel of D. Fradique de Portugal is a national monument in its own right.

   

4. 4Palacete Vieira da Silva

   The physician João Lopes Nunes Vieira da Silva had this house built in the first decade of the 20th century as his family home, and it was the first building on Avenida da Estação. It is Art Nouveau, which shows in the ironwork, the tiles with natural motifs and the decorated windows and doors.

   

5. 5Claustro do Convento das Maltesas

   This was the convent of the Maltesas, the nuns of the Order of Malta, and the source calls it the only retreat site of the Knights of Rhodes in Portugal. The cloister has columns of local marble with capitals carved as the heads of nuns, and three chapels open off it. Polychrome Pombaline tiles line the staircase and the Chapter Room. In 1881 the Misericórdia of Estremoz moved back in, and the building is now shared with the Ciência Viva science centre.

   

6. 6Convento dos Congregados

   Work on this Baroque convent began in 1698 on the orders of King Pedro II, yet its church was only inaugurated in 1995, about 300 years after the works began. Today the building holds the town council, the municipal library and the Museum of Sacred Art.

   

7. 7The marble pillory

   In the central square stands Estremoz's pillory, a marble column in the Manueline style that dates from the early 16th century and was restored in the 20th. The marble is the town's own: Estremoz, Borba and Vila Viçosa are known around the world for it, and locally it ends up in doorsteps, pavements and cobblestones.

   

8. 8The old town jail

   This 16th-century building on the castle square was Estremoz's jail, built beside the medieval town hall and the parish church. Its corners are made of marble, which gives it a sturdy, prison-like look, and a 16th-century marble staircase possibly led up to the town hall. Look at the upper windows for the Manueline decoration on their lintels.

   

9. 9Igreja de Santa Maria

   The parish church stands on the castle square. Work on the present Mannerist church began in 1560 on the orders of Cardinal Henrique and was completed in the 17th century. It is a hall church with a plain whitewashed facade and, inside, marble columns noted for their size. A Romanesque church stood here before it.

   

10. 10Torre das Três Coroas

    The keep of Estremoz castle, also called the Tower of the Three Crowns, is 27 metres tall and has three crenellated balconies on corbels. It survived the explosion in the castle armory that destroyed most of the castle's buildings. Today it can be climbed by a stairway from the pousada beside it, which is named for Queen Saint Isabel, with views over the town.

    

11. 11Museu Municipal Prof. Joaquim Vermelho

    The museum began as a small one proposed in 1879 to show local products such as marble, cork and ceramics, and it opened together with the library on 2 May 1880. It moved into this building on Largo D. Dinis in the late 1960s. Estremoz's clay figures, the bonecos that UNESCO recognizes as intangible cultural heritage, are part of its collection: the council bought about 70 in 1941, and a potters' workshop was built in the backyard in 1979.

    

12. 12Capela da Rainha Santa Isabel

    Queen Isabel, wife of King Dinis, died in the castle on 4 July 1336, and the rooms where she died became this chapel. She had come to prevent a war with Castile, and she was sainted in 1516 by Pope Leo X. The chapel's azulejo tiles tell her story, and a modern marble statue of her with her skirts full of roses stands in the citadel.

    

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