The history of Évora spans over five millennia, beginning with Celtic tribes and later becoming a significant Roman city. Its golden age was in the 15th and 16th centuries as a favoured residence for Portuguese kings. This royal patronage led to the construction of numerous palaces, churches, and the founding of a university in 1559, shaping its well-preserved historic center. That makes one city with as all the ingredients to be now a UNESCO World Heritage site. That’s what made us think it was a place well worth spending two days in.
Our day began at 📍Do Largo for brunch. They’re horrible at coffee but excellent at food. We pretty much found our standing brunch location for our stay in the city on the first try.
With the sun out there are more people out and about in the city. The town still feels small. We built our list of sits to visit. Our first was described as sublime gardens. The 📍Jardim Público de Évora being right next to the 📍Palácio de Dom Manuel, also on our list, so two birds with one stone. Now, I do not know what kind of hallucinogenic the person who described the gardens as sublime was on, but they must have been very good. Other than the abondance of peacocks, there was nothing remarkable about the gardens. We know, we explored them thoroughly in hopes of finding the remarkable portion, only to be both amused at trying to figure out what could have created that impression and disappointed by the very lacklustre park. The palace was essentially the one room describing the story of the city and a temporary Exhibit that was in the process of either being assembled or disassembled. It did provide access to the terrace overlooking the gardens. If the garden had been magnificent it would have been the best spot to admire them. The palace visit was free and informative so not a bad deal.
It took us less than an hour to do both and we wanted to hit the 📍Capela dos Ossos (Chapel of Bones) later in the day as our reference (that was possibly on hallucinogenics when they visited) said it would make the light better. We grabbed some pastries, some sparkling water and headed home to pass the time and headed back out two hours later. We arrived at the 📍Igreja e Mosteiro de São Francisco and, due to a slight lack of signage, ended visiting the church attached to the chapel against our will. When it comes to churches I feel that one is pretty much like the other. Rows of pews, alter at the end, guy on a cross, art about how to guy ended up on said cross and got off it and all that. The style might change but it’s like the Madonna and Bambino painting theme or the endless reconstructed pottery in museums; at some point you’ve seen enough that you’ve seen them all or, at least, that’s how I feel. As a result, I avoid visiting churches like the plague but allow a small number of “religious points” to Karine for sites she judges are exceptional. That church was not exceptional by any stretch of the definition. A few meters from the church’s door, we found the entrance to our actual goal. The chapel of bones itself is not actually made of bones but the walls are finished with them. Nobody had to worry about it falling down due to the brittleness of bones. It was built in the late 16th century by Franciscan monks. They saw it as a practical solution to a growing problem: over 40 cemeteries in the area were taking up valuable land. Rather than hiding the exhumed remains of roughly 5,000 people, the monks decided, as one would when faced with such a problem I assume, to use the bones to decorate the chapel's walls and pillars. Of course, that all got wrapped in religious imagery somehow. While I do not understand it one bit, it’s still impressive specially when you think of the age and number of people required to decorate the space. It got to a point where people we requesting to be buried in the chapel of bones, or so the interpretation panels say.
Done with the religious visit we steered our feet toward the 📍Chafariz da Praça do Giraldo (Giraldo Square Fountain) to find a terrace with seating in the shade that would serve us some wine and snacks for our tradition of people watching. We still had some time before dinner and wanted to enjoy the warmth. 📍Café Arcada was happy to oblige. They don’t offer table service, you go in, order what you want, pay, get what you ordered and step out on the terrace to enjoy it. Quick, efficient, and just what we needed to recoup from a disappointing garden and plan our day for tomorrow. We just had finished all of the sights in a couple of hours and still had a full day in the city.
Dinner was at 📍Dom Joaquim. A Michelin recommended restaurant that, while you can feel they won’t miss an opportunity to separate a tourist from their money, will cook good dishes to compensate. We enjoyed our dinner and got back home to prepare to go on an adventure in Évora’s surrounding area.