Evora

This morning, we did a walking tour of Evora. Evora is one of the few Portuguese cities that, through times, has maintained its old medieval walls. These walls surround the city center.

We started by going through the Public Garden that has The Palace of King Manuel and The Ruinas Fingidas "fake ruins" that were designed to mimic ancient Roman structures.
Peacocks live and roam freely.

We then went to the Chapel Of Bones, built in the 17th century. It gets its name because the interior walls are covered and decorated with human skulls and bones of all ages. Monks exhumed an estimated 5000 corpses. The bones, which came from ordinarily people who were buried in common cemeteries, where arranged in a variety of patterns with a message to tell people that in the end we are all going to look the same whether you were rich or poor.

Beside it is the Church of St. Francis. It has 6 chapels on each side to have private burials to show they were rich and had a better chance of going to heaven.

As we were making our way to the Roman Temple, we happened to come upon the Archbishop of Evora, D. Francisco Jose Senra Coelho. He was leading the Clergy Jubilee celebration to start the new Pastoral Year and a celebration of the 2025 "Pilgrims of Hope"

The Roman Temple, often mistakenly called the Temple of Diana, dates back to the 1st century AD and was likely dedicated to the Roman Emperor Augustus.Read more