Sights in Coimbra
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Museu Acadêmico
The Museu Acadêmico, just uphill from Largo Dom Dinis, has some interesting displays on Coimbra student life, including vintage Queima das Fitas posters from decades past (especially noteworthy is the 27 May 1926 poster showing hordes of student revellers one day before the coup d’état that ushered in the Salazar era). The museum is also adorned with some grand azulejos (hand-painted tiles).
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Casa Museu Bissaya Barreto
Bissaya Barreto was a local surgeon, scholar and obsessive hoarder of fine arts, and his handsome, late-19th-century mansion has been turned into a museum. A guide (not necessarily English-speaking) accompanies guests through rooms jam-packed with Portuguese sculpture and painting, Chinese porcelain, old azulejos and period furniture.
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Velha Universidade
The Velha Universidade consists of a series of remarkable, 16th- to 18th-century buildings, all set around the vast Patio das Escolas. You enter the patio by way of the elegant, 17th-century Porta Férrea, which occupies the same site as the main gate to Coimbra's Moorish stronghold. In the square is a statue of João III, who turns his back on a sweeping view of the city and the river. It was he who re-established the university in Coimbra in 1537 and invited big-shot scholars to teach here.
The square's most prominent feature is the much-photographed 18th-century clock tower. This tower is nicknamed a cabra (the goat) because, when it chimed to mark the end of studies, …
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Biblioteca Joanina
The Old University's library, Biblioteca Joanina seems far too extravagant and distracting for actual study, with its rosewood, ebony and jacaranda tables, its gilt Chinoiserie bookshelves and elaborately frescoed ceilings. The library was a gift from João V himself in the early 18th century. Its 300,000 books, ancient and leather-bound, deal with law, philosophy and theology, though they might as well be painted onto the walls for all the hands-on study they receive now.
Visitors are admitted in small numbers and on a timetable and some rooms may be closed during degree ceremonies. The turismo might urge you to book a few days ahead, but you still may be able to get in …
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Núcleo da Cidade Muralhada/Torre de Almedina
Housed in the medieval tower directly above the Arco de Almedina, this new museum displays a plaster reproduction of Coimbra’s old town layout, complete with castle. A multilingual audiovisual presentation traces the fate of the many towers that used to line Coimbra’s walls, each lit in red on the map as its story is told. There are fine city views upstairs, but the real fun is looking down through the matacães (dog-killers), big holes cut in the watchtower’s stone floor, through which hot oil was traditionally poured on unsuspecting enemies below.
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Sé Velha
Coimbra’s stunning old cathedral is considered to be one of the finest examples of Romanesque architecture in all of Portugal. Its crenellated exterior and narrow, slit-like lower windows serve as reminders of the nation’s embattled early days, when the Moors were still a threat. Since its construction in the late 12th century, the building has been only slightly altered. Even the 16th-century Renaissance portal in the northern wall is so eroded you hardly notice it. The austere majesty of the interior is broken only by a 16th-century gilded altarpiece.
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Arco de Almedina
Long a Moorish stronghold and for a century the seat of Portugal's kings, Coimbra's upper town rises quickly and picturesquely from the banks of the Rio Mondego. The most picturesque way to enter its labyrinth of lanes is via Arco de Almedina - the city's heavy-duty Moorish gateway - and up the staggered stairs known as Rua Quebra-Costas (Backbreaker).
People have been gasping up this hill (and falling down it) for centuries; local legend says it was the 19th-century writer Almeida Garrett who persuaded the mayor to install the stairs.
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Museu da Ciência
This wonderful museum occupies a centuries-old former monastery converted by Pombal into the university’s chemical engineering building. With a couple of awards under its belt since opening in 2006, it features intriguing state-of-the-art interactive science displays coexisting with 18th-century lab sinks. Don’t miss the frogs-in-underwear display, the giant glowing globe in a room paved with medieval stones, or the psychedelic insect’s-eye view of flowers. Displays are English/Portuguese bilingual.
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Portugal dos Pequenitos
Portugal dos Pequenitos, the brainchild of local collector Bissaya Barreto, is an impossibly cute theme park where kids clamber over, into and through doll’s-house versions of Portugal’s most famous monuments, while parents clutch cameras at the ready. There’s an extra charge to visit the marginally interesting mini-museums of marine life, clothing and furniture. You can also hop aboard one of the frequent river trips with Basófias.
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Igreja de Santa Cruz
This church plunges you back to Manueline and Renaissance times. Step through the Renaissance porch and flamboyant 18th-century arch to discover some of the Coimbra School’s finest work, including an ornate pulpit and the elaborate tombs (probably carved by Nicolas Chanterène) of Portugal’s first kings, Afonso Henriques and Sancho I. The most striking Manueline work is in the restrained 16th-century cloister.
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Gardens
Legend says Dona Inês de Castro met her grisly end in the gardens of this private estate. It’s now a deluxe hotel, although anyone can take a turn about the gardens and track down the Fonte dos Amores (Lovers’ Fountain), which marks the spot where the king’s unwitting mistress was struck down. Also note the sequoia tree planted by English hero the Duke of Wellington.
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Jardim Botânico
A serene place to catch your breath, the lovely botanical garden sits in the shadow of the 16th-century Aqueduto de São Sebastião. Founded by the Marquês de Pombal, the gardens combine formal flowerbeds, meandering paths and elegant fountains. The green-fingered can also visit the lush greenhouses and the adjacent Museu Botânico.
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Convento de Santa Clara-a-Velha
Slowly being cleared of the river ooze that has drowned it since the 17th century, this Gothic convent was closed for renovation at the time of writing. Founded in 1330 by the saintly Dona Isabel, Dom Dinis’ wife, it served as her final resting place until flooding and mud forced her to move uphill to Convento de Santa Clara-a-Nova.
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Convento de Santa Clara-a-Nova
Begun on higher ground in the 17th century to replace its flooded twin, this convent is devoted almost entirely to the saintly Isabel’s memory. Aisle panels tell her life story, while her solid-silver casket is enshrined above the altar. Even her clothes hang in the sacristy. Her statue is the focus of the Festa da Rainha Santa.
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Museu da Cidade Edifício Chiado
This sunlit confection of rippling, coiling iron opened in 1910 as Coimbra’s largest commercial emporium. It now houses a gallery with a permanent collection of paintings, sculpture, ceramics, furniture and splendid silverware donated by local collector José Carlos Telo de Morais, plus temporary exhibitions.
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Praça da República
Leafy Praça da República is the unofficial student social centre. The surrounding neighbourhood, laid out in the 19th century and still dominated by prim bourgeois homes of the period, is a relaxing break from the high density of both the university and the Baixa area.
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Alleys
For a glimpse of student life, stroll along any of the alleys around the sé velha or below the sé nova. Flags and graffiti mark the cramped houses known as repúblicas, each housing a dozen or so students from the same region or faculty.
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CAV (Centro de Artes Visuais)
This museum hosts cutting-edge contemporary photographic and video exhibitions within a whitewashed cloister that once served as a prison during the Spanish Inquisition. It’s hidden in the backstreets west of Igreja de Santa Cruz.
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Palácio de Sub Ripas
Up Rua Sub Ripas in Coimbra's upper town is the grand Manueline doorway of the early-16th-century Palácio de Sub Ripas; its Renaissance windows and stone ornaments are the work of Jean de Rouen, whose workshop was nearby.
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Sé Nova
Dominating Largo da Sé Nova in front of the Museu Nacional Machado de Castro is the severe Sé Nova, started by the Jesuits in 1598 but only completed a century later.
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Ponte de Santa Clara
Compact Coimbra is best toured on foot. Sights of interest across the river are accessible on foot via the Ponte de Santa Clara.
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Museu Nacional Machado de Castro
This museum houses one of Portugal’s most important collections of 14th- to 16th-century sculpture.
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Torre de Anto
On Rua Sub Ripas in Coimbra's upper town is the Torre de Anto, a tower that once formed part of the town walls.
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Museu Botânico
The Museu Botânico, in the Botanical Garden, is a museum for the green-fingered.
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