Évora: the Chapel of Bones and the university: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
A quieter, more learned Évora, from a plague chapel to a university founded in 1559
Évora reuses its buildings: a palace became a Carmelite convent, a Jesuit college became a university, the ground beside a royal palace became a public garden, and an old palace is now the home of a foundation.
The stops
King João II ordered this chapel built. Its church licence is dated 7 September 1480, work probably began in 1482, and it was open for worship by 1490. Fourteen cylindrical buttresses topped with conical caps surround it, and the entrance has crenellated round towers. It stands outside the old walls, on the site of a temporary wooden hospital set up for victims of the plague of 1479 and 1480.
Photo: Alessandro Bonvini from Reggio Emilia, Italy — CC BY 2.0 Work on this garden began in 1863, directed by the Italian Giuseppe Cinatti with the sponsorship of the Alentejo farmer José Maria Ramalho Dinis Perdigão. It has two artificial lakes and a set of fake ruins built in 1866, and close by stands the Gallery of Dames, all that remains of the Royal Palace of Évora that King Manuel I expanded. The iron bandstand was inaugurated on 20 May 1888, and for a time you had to pay to walk here.
Photo: Vitor Oliveira from Torres Vedras, PORTUGAL — CC BY-SA 2.0 This small chapel beside the entrance of the Church of São Francisco has walls and eight pillars decorated with human bones and skulls, taken from Évora's medieval cemeteries. A line at the entrance reads, in English, "We bones that are here await yours." The church around it is Gothic with some Manueline influences, built between 1475 and the 1550s.
Photo: F Delventhal from Outside Washington, D.C., US — CC BY 2.0 Giant stone figures sit at the top of the front of this Renaissance church, and locals call them the Meninos da Graça. It belonged to an Augustinian convent: the royal architect Miguel de Arruda was directing the work to enlarge the convent in the 16th century, and by 1540 the new church was in use for worship. It has been a National Monument since 1910.
Photo: Panegyrics of Granovetter from Toronto, Ontario, Canada — CC BY-SA 4.0 Carmelite friars settled in Évora in 1531, at first outside the walls. In 1665 King Afonso VI gave them the palaces and gardens of the House of Braganza in Évora, near the Porta de Moura, on condition that they keep the Porta dos Nós, a doorway from the old building, which still opens onto the church forecourt. Their new church was blessed in June 1691, and its lines are those of severe 17th-century Baroque.
Photo: Alentejano — CC BY-SA 3.0 This 16th-century house on the Largo das Portas de Moura carries the coat of arms of the Cordovil family. Its corner lookout is the thing to see: a gallery of horseshoe-shaped twin arches under a conical cap, a Manueline and Mudéjar style typical of the Évora region. Inside, late 19th-century wall paintings follow the style of Robert Adam, and the University of Évora bought part of the house in the 1990s.
Photo: Gerd Eichmann — CC BY-SA 4.0 The collection goes back to Frei Manuel do Cenáculo, Archbishop of Évora from 1802 to 1814. It was founded in 1915 as the Évora Regional Museum, opened to the public in 1921 in the Palácio Amaral and moved to this building on the Largo do Conde de Vila Flor in 1929. Of its more than 20,000 pieces, a 13-panel polyptych comes from the former high altar of Évora's cathedral.
Photo: Retogenes — CC BY-SA 4.0 A parish church already stood here in 1302. In the 16th century it was deeply reworked, which gave the nave, side chapels and choir the look they have now, and its porch and front are partly clad in marble. Look for the room of the Brotherhood of the Blessed Sacrament: its blue-and-white tile panels by Gabriel del Barco, probably from 1699, show Moses bringing water from the rock and the Prodigal Son.
Photo: Vitor Oliveira from Torres Vedras, PORTUGAL — CC BY-SA 2.0 This palace on the Pátio de São Miguel is also called the Palace of the Counts of Basto, after the family that owned it. The main body has a Renaissance loggia above a Gothic arcade with a ribbed vault. Three ground-floor rooms have vaults painted in fresco by Francisco de Campos with mythological scenes, one signed and dated 1578. It has been a National Monument since 1922 and is now the seat and museum of the Fundação Eugénio de Almeida.
Photo: Pedro from Maia (Porto), Portugal — CC BY 2.0 Cardinal Henry founded the university in 1559 and put the newly formed Society of Jesus in charge. Soldiers surrounded the college on 8 February 1759, when the Marquis of Pombal banished the Jesuits, and the university did not reopen until 1973. The college's Renaissance cloister has Tuscan arches, and the classrooms are decorated with azulejos, among them Aristotle teaching Alexander the Great.
Photo: Concierge.2C — CC BY-SA 3.0
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