Days 4 & 5 - Évora

Évora is a walled city. The Romans built the oldest walls in the 3rd century, enclosing the highest part of the city. The Visigoths and Arabs in succession, maintained the Roman walls and added their own defenses. By the 16th century, the city had expanded beyond the old walls so an outer wall was built to protect the population.

Roman Ruins in Évora

Roman Baths

After the Romans came the Visigoths, then Arabs, then Christians, although it wasn't a straight line, with much intermixing for centuries. Eventually, in 1139, the first king of Portugal, Alfonso Henriques, declared a unified church and state under Christianity.

Skipping the history of the Inquisition on Évora, this brings us to the two cathedrals. 

The Évora Cathedral sits on the highest ground in the city, inside the original Roman walls. It was built between 1186 and 1250, then later improved during the 15th and 16th centuries.

The Cloister

The Évora Cathedral is impressive, but to us, the more interesting cathedral in Évora is the Church and Monastery of St. Francis. It consists of the cathedral, the Chapel of the Bones, and a convent (convent or monastery were used interchangeably and did not conotate sex). First the cathedral. It is beautiful inside, but it is here three unprecedented items set it apart.

The artist charged with painting one of the frescos was given too much leeway. Instead of painting John baptizing Jesus, he painted Jesus baptized

 Mary Magdalene. There is nothing Biblical about

 this, Jesus never baptized anyone in the Bible.

 When the patron saw the painting, he ordered it

 changed. The paint had already dried in the plaster, there was no undoing, so the painter added a beard and mustache to Mary Magdalene and was done with it.

John Baptizing Jesus or
Jesus Baptizing Mary Magdalene 
You Decide

The cathedral also has two statues of a visibly pregnant Mary. During the Inquisition, this was unacceptable. Someone with foresight hid the two statues. They remained hidden/lost for 200 years.

A convent is associated with and attached to cathedral. In the 17th century, three friars from the convent wanted to convey a message on the temporary nature of life. To do so, they built a chapel of human bones. This is not as macabre as it might sound. To begin with, at the time there were mass graves surrounding the cathedral, people who were not important enough to be buried inside the church, but wanted to be as close to holy ground as possible. Digging up the bones and bringing them into the chapel was not seen as a desecration or even disrespectful.

We Bones That Are Here, We Await You

Bones from approximately 5000 people were used to create the chapel.

Fountains and Squares

Within the walls, Évora is a series of streets radiating from city squares. Fountains in the squares supplied water to both people and beasts of burden.

Solid Marble Fountain Dating from 1556
The upper pool is for people and the lower one for animals.

The fountain in the main square is also made of a single piece of solid marble. Unfortunately, when the builder got the marble to the city, it was too large to fit through any of the city gates. To solve the problem, they demolished the gate and part of the wall.

Évora was a wonderful place to visit between the big cities if Lisbon and Porto. With mostly unstructured time and a very walkable city we were glad to relax and explore on our own.