The Alto Alentejo 2

Évora’s Franciscan church Igreja de São Francisco dates from the early 16th century and has a portico with a mix of rounded, pointed and horseshoe arches typical of Manueline architecture. Its main claim to fame is its gruesome Capela dos Ossos (Chapel of Bones), built between 1460 and 1510 and proving that, in one way at least, man is immortal.

The walls and pillars are lined with the neatly stacked bones of more than 5000 monks taken from 42 monastic cemeteries that existed in 15th and 16th century Évora and were deemed to be taking up valuable space.

Over the door there’s an inscription which, roughly translated, reads “We bones that are here are waiting for your bones”.

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		Narrow alleys all over Évora reflect the Moorish influence.



	Évora has two concentric rings of defensive walls. The inner ring, built by the Romans, dates from the 1st century AD, although additions were made during the Moorish occupation and again in Medieval times. Only fragments remain, but two surviving towers can be viewed from the Largo da Porta de Moura, which is named after an Arab gate within the original walls. By the 14th century the town had outgrown its original walls and a new set were built to enclose the expanded spread. Finished in the reign of King Fernando l, the last king of the Burgundian dynasty, these had 40 towers and 10 gates. In the 17th century the walls most evident today came into being. Having declared himself King of Portugal after 60 years of Spanish annexation, King João l erected fortifications on the existing outer walls in anticipation of Spanish attack. They withstood a heavy battering from the Spanish in 1663.


	Two towers mark an Arab gate in the original walls

By the 11th century the Christian reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula was reaching Portugal which, by that time, had the status of a country even though its rulers were appointed by the Kingdom of León (north-west Spain). Throughout this time Évora and the wider Alentejo remained under Moorish occupation and was one of their last strongholds.

Then in 1139 Alfonso Henriques, the grandson of Alfonso lV of León, declared himself as the first King of Portugal (based on the fact that his father, Henry of Burgundy, had been ‘Count of Portugal’). This marked the beginning of Portugal as an independent country, although King Alfonso l as he became
known, didn’t win Évora back from the Moors until around 1166.

House of Burgundy

Évora flourished through the Middle Ages as a centre of learning and the Arts and as the preferred seat of the Portuguese kings. The country’s first dynasty was the House of Burgundy and it was in the reign of King Fernando l, the last of the nine kings of this dynasty, that Évora’s outer ring of defensive walls were completed.

When King Fernando l died in 1383 his wife Leanor became Regent and promised the throne to Juan l of Castile, who had married her only daughter. The ordinary people didn’t relish the prospect of returning to Spanish rule, though, and supported a counter claim by an illegitimate Portuguese heir called João, Grand Master of the House of Avis. After a two-year war, João won with the help of the English. Then in 1387 he married John of Gaunt’s daughter, Philippa of Lancaster and the two countries remained as allies right through to modern times.

The Avis Dynasty

João became João l, the first king of the Avis Dynasty, which ruled Portugal for over 190 years, with Évora as its chosen seat. Under royal patronage, architects, writers and artists came from afar and enriched the city with monuments, works of art and an array of fine Manueline and Renaissance buildings - palaces, churches and stately mansions. In 1559 the future Cardinal King, Cardinal Dom Henriques, founded a prestigious Jesuit university in the city.

In 1580 Portugal was annexed by Spain again and although the country defiantly regained its independence just 60 years later under King João lV (the fourth Duke of Bragança) future Portuguese monarchs chose to move the court closer to Lisbon. Over the next 400 years Évora declined into nothing more than a market town, although the university remained open until 1759.