Things to do in Central Portugal
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Á Capella
A tiny, 14th-century chapel transformed into a candlelit cocktail lounge, Á Capella regularly hosts the city’s most renowned fado musicians. The setting is as intimate as the music itself, with heart-rendingly good acoustics. Be forewarned that these shows cater directly to a tourist crowd, but the atmosphere and music are both superb.
reviewed
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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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Restaurante Zé Manel
Tucked down a nondescript alleyway, this little gem, which is papered with scholarly doodles and scribbled poems, is easy to miss. Despite its location, it’s highly popular, so come early or be ready to wait. Try the good feijoada á leitão (a stew of beans and suckling pig).
reviewed
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Pastelaria Conventual
An atmospheric pastry shop serving strong coffee and sweet desserts to a largely local crowd. Try regional specialties like toucinho da abadessa, a kind of almond fruitcake.
reviewed
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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, …
reviewed
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Charola
Thought to be in imitation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the 16-sided charola dominates the Convento de Cristo complex. The interior is otherworldly in its vast heights - an awesome combination of simple forms and rich embellishment. It's said that the circular design enabled the nights to attend mass on horseback. In the centre stands an eerily gothic high altar, like a temple within a temple. Restored wall paintings date from the early 16th century.
A huge funnel to the left is an ancient organ pipe (the organ itself is long gone). Dom Manuel was responsible for tacking the nave on to the west side of the Charola and for commissioning the architect D…
reviewed
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Promontório do Sítio
The Promontório do Sítio, the cliff-top area 110m above the beach, is popular for its tremendous views and, among Portuguese devotees, its mystical associations. According to legend it was here that a long-lost statue of the Virgin and brought back from Nazareth in the 4th century, was finally found in the 18th century.
Even more famously, it's said the Virgin appeared here on a foggy day in 1182. Local nobleman Dom Fuas Roupinho was in pursuit of a deer when the animal disappeared off the edge of the Sítio precipice. Dom Fuas cried out to the Virgin for help and his horse miraculously stopped right at cliff's edge. Dom Fuas built the small Hermida da Memória chapel on …
reviewed
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Palácio dos Duques de Cadaval
Just northwest of the Igreja de São João is the 17th-century façade of a much older palace and castle, as revealed by the two powerful square towers that bracket it. The Palácio dos Duques de Cadaval was given to Martim Afonso de Melo, the governor of Évora, by Dom João I, and it also served from time to time as a royal residence. A section of the palace still serves as the private quarters of the de Melo family; the other main occupant is the city's highway department.
The well-proportioned 1st-floor rooms are relaxing to amble around, and form the Salas de Exposição do Palácio, a well laid-out, if enigmatically labelled, collection of family portraits, early il…
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Templo Romano
Opposite the museum is the complete Templo Romano dating from the 2nd or early 3rd century. It is the best-preserved Roman monument in Portugal, and probably on the Iberian Peninsula. Though it's commonly referred to as the Temple of Diana, there's no consensus about the deity to which it was dedicated, and some archaeologists believe it may have been dedicated to Julius Caesar.
How did these 14 Corinthian columns, capped with Estremoz marble, manage to survive in such good shape for some 18 centuries? The temple was apparently walled up in the Middle Ages to form a small fortress, and then used as the town slaughterhouse. It was only rediscovered late in the 19th century…
reviewed
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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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Igreja de São João
The small, fabulous Igreja de São João, which faces the Templo Romano, was founded in 1485 by one Rodrigo Afonso de Melo, count of Olivença and the first governor of Portuguese Tangier, to serve as his family's pantheon. It is still privately owned, by the Duques de Cadaval, and notably well kept.
Behind its elaborate Gothic portal is a nave lined with fantastic floor-to-ceiling azulejos (hand-painted tiles) produced in 1711 by one of Portugal's best-known tile-makers, António de Oliveira Bernardes. The grates in the floor expose a surprising underworld: you can see a deep Moorish cistern that predates the church, and an ossuary full of monks' bones. In the sacristy be…
reviewed
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Temple
Opposite the museum are the remains of a Roman temple dating from the 2nd or early 3rd century. It’s among the best-preserved Roman monuments in Portugal, and probably on the Iberian Peninsula. Though it’s commonly referred to as the Temple of Diana, there’s no consensus about the deity to which it was dedicated, and some archaeologists believe it may have been dedicated to Julius Caesar. How did these 14 Corinthian columns, capped with Estremoz marble, manage to survive in such good shape for some 18 centuries? The temple was apparently walled up in the Middle Ages to form a small fortress, and then used as the town slaughterhouse. It was uncovered late in the 19th centu…
reviewed
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Praça do Giraldo
The Praça do Giraldo has seen some potent moments in Portuguese history, including the 1483 execution of Fernando, Duke of Bragança; the public burning of victims of the Inquisition in the 16th century; and fiery debates on agrarian reform in the 1970s. Nowadays the square is still the city focus, hosting less dramatic activities such as sitting in the sun and coffee drinking.
The narrow lanes to the southwest were once Évora's judiaria (Jewish quarter). To the northeast, Rua 5 de Outubro, climbing to the sé (cathedral), is lined by handsome townhouses wearing wrought-iron balconies, while side alleys pass beneath Moorish-style arches.
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Capela dos Ossos
What draws the crowds, though, is the mesmerising Capela dos Ossos. A small room behind the altar has walls and columns lined with carefully arranged bones and skulls of some 5000 people. Visitors here describe the sight as macabre, artistic, ghoulish or beautiful (and, tasteful or not, we even heard several people humming ‘Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones’). According to records, 17th-century Franciscan monks constructed this as a memento mori (reminder of death) to meditate on the human condition. An inscription over the entrance translates as: ‘We bones await yours’.
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Museu de Évora
Adjacent to the cathedral, in what used to be the archbishop's palace (built in the 16th century), is the elegant Museu de Évora. Fragments of old Roman and Manueline statuary and façades line the courtyard, which has been excavated to reveal Visigothic, Roman and medieval remains. In polished rooms upstairs are former Episcopal furnishings and a gallery of Flemish paintings.
Most memorable is Life of the Virgin, a striking 13-panel series that was originally part of the cathedral's altarpiece, created by anonymous Flemish artists, most or all of them working in Portugal around 1500.
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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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Museum
This museum is housed in a beautiful 17th-century almshouse near the former palace. Pretty hand-painted furniture sits alongside endearing, locally carved wooden figures (charming rural scenes by Joaquim Velhinho) and a collection of typical 19th-century domestic Alentejan items. On the ground floor is an amazing display of the unique Estremoz pottery figurines – some 500 pieces covering 200 years, including lots of ladies with carnivalesque outfits, explosively floral headdresses and wind-rippled dresses. There’s even an entire 19th-century Easter Parade.
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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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Igreja de São Francisco
Évora's best-known church is the Igreja de São Francisco, a tall and huge Manueline-Gothic structure, completed around 1510 and dedicated to St Francis. Exuberant nautical motifs celebrating the Age of Discoveries deck the walls and reflect the confident, booming mood of the time. It's all topped by a cross of Christ's order and dome. Legend has it that the Portuguese navigator Gil Vicente is buried here. What draws the crowds, though, is the Capela dos Ossos (Chapel of Bones) to the right of the main entrance.
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Dom Joaquim
Housed in a renovated building, Dom Joaquim offers fine dining in a contemporary setting. Modern artworks line the stone walls, and cane chairs grace clothed tables. While it’s smart and trendy, it offers excellent traditional meat-based (including game) and seafood dishes, such as perdiz (partridge) and caçao (dogfish). For dessert, we dare you to try the toucinho ransoso dos santos – literally translated as ‘rancid lard of the saint’. Oh so sweet.
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Café Santa Cruz
Few cafes in Portugal offer such an atmospheric backdrop. The interior, set in a dramatically beautiful high-vaulted former chapel, features stained-glass windows and graceful stone arch, while the outdoor patio area affords one of the city’s best vantage points over the popular Praça 8 de Maio. Popular with tourists and locals alike, the cafe periodically hosts free evening music events and talks. You’ll pay a bit extra here for the atmosphere, but it’s worth it.
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Igreja de São João Baptista
The old town’s most striking church faces Praça da República, itself an eye-catching ensemble of 17th-century buildings. The recently restored church dates mostly from the late 15th century. It has an octagonal spire and richly ornamented Manueline doorways on its northern and western sides. Inside are 16th- and 17th-century azulejos; Gregório Lopes, one of 16th-century Portugal’s finest artists, painted the six panels hanging inside.
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