Evora - "It's Not Big, It's Huge"

I have been procrastinating while thinking of how I am going to write this Evora footprint. We have seen so much in this small city of close to 60,000 people and I wonder where I can even start to write about everything that Donna, Chris and I have seen during the past week. Evora is compact, so all of its key sights are all within a 5 minute walk from the main square, Praça do Giraldo, where we were staying. As one local lady said, “It’s not big, it’s huge”.

So here goes ... Evora sights in a nutshell ...

The square was the market during the Moorish times. Now it seems to be a meeting place for university students as well as old-timers. The square was named after Giraldo the Fearless, a Christian knight who led a surprise attack (and beheaded a guard and his daughter) and retook Evora from the Moors in 1165. Giraldo is the symbol of the city. Everywhere, even on lamp posts, we saw the coat of arms showing a knight on a horse and 2 beheaded Moors!

Until the 16th Century the area behind the square were the narrow streets of the Jewish quarter. The bible prohibited Christians from changing interest for loans so Jews did the moneylending instead. The streets still have names relating to finance (Money Street, Merchant’s Street, etc.)

Évora's major sights — a Roman temple and an early Gothic cathedral — are close together just off the main square. A lively shopping street with cork products, tile, leather, pottery, ironworks and Arraiolos rugs connects these sights with the square.

A Roman wall used to surround what is know the inner part of the city. Our map showed where the old wall used to be. Most of the wall that encircles the city now, is from the 14th Century and there is a more modern section from the 17th Century.

At the town’s highest point (300m or 1,000’ above sea level) is where there is a concentration of places to visit - the Roman Temple, a palace, a chapel, a luxurious hotel (Pousada) that used to be a 15th century monastery, gardens with a view and the Museum of Evora.

The Roman temple, with its 14 Corinthian columns, was part of the Roman forum and the main square in the first century A.D.

The museum is where the Roman forum used to be. The museum is huge and we spent a fair bit of time here, looking at excavated sections in the museum’s courtyard. I won’t even go into describing all the artifacts that the museum holds. It holds a treasure trove of items, hundreds of years old, that were found in this area.

Across the square from the Museum is a white building with windows trimmed in yellow that once was the tribunal site during Portugal’s Inquisition.
Here thousands of innocent people, many of them Jews, were tried and found guilty of crimes against faith. Punishment was anything from whipping, imprisonment, banishment, slave labour or death by burning in the public square. Now the building houses a Contemporary Art Museum.

The University of Evora is just a few blocks away. The main building started out being a Jesuit university in 1559. Two hundred years later, it was decided that the Jesuits had become too rich and too political and hadn’t changed their thinking with the times, so the Jesuit society was abolished in 1759. The university was closed and 200 years later it was opened again as a secular university. While we were there, the 8,000 students were preparing for exams so the city was fairly quiet.

Near the Roman Temple, is an important cathedral called the Cathedral of Santa Maria de Evora built in the 12th Century. Portugal has three archbishops and one lives in Evora, hence the church is called a Se, a cathedral where a bishop resides. We visited this huge complex and seemed to wander for hours in its rooms - the main cathedral, the cloisters, the Museum of Sacred Art and even went up into the tower. Apparently the 16th century pipe organ still works. Even in the cloister, we met Giraldo and the two severed heads on a relief.

After walking around and visiting so many old places full of artifacts, we treated ourselves to wine and delicious tapas in a cute little restaurant called the Vinarium.

There, it’s done... time for another glass of Alentejo wine.

P.S. We are having wifi problems so at this time the photos aren’t uploading. Coming soon.Read more