2:30 pm.

After a cold wet morning poking around the main sights of Evora, I´m lingering over lunch. This is partially because I´ve been somewhat taken advantage of by the owner of the nice restaurant where I chose to stop: he asked me what I wanted to drink, chose to interpret ¨fruit juice¨as ¨red wine¨, brought me a bottle, and put the whole thing on my bill. It´s not even that cheap a bottle! So I feel obliged to do some damage to it before leaving. Plus, I have the nasty suspicion that there´s not much left for me to see in Evora and I have three hours to kill.

When I left the guesthouse this morning I wandered into the main square, Praça do Giraldo, and found a sympathetic coffee shop for breakfast (see the previous post). Afterwards I went up the narrow Rua 5 de Outobro (actually, all the streets in Evora are narrow,) to the high point in the town, which is occupied by the Temple of Diana, the Museu de Evora, and the Sé (cathedral).

The temple is just a few columns on top of a raised base, so after a photo I went into the museum. The building housing Evora´s collection used to be the palace of the archbishop, and the whole thing is located on top of an extensive set of Roman ruins. The centre courtyard, and as many of the ground level rooms as structure stability would allow, have been opened up for acheological excavation and there is an interesting set of tombstones, statuary and other stonework on display. However, the real stars of the museum´s collection are upstairs on the second floor: a stunning and extensive set of Flemish and Portugese paintings, mostly on wood rather than canvas, including various artists´ versions of the life of the Virgin Mary, and a few key scenes in the life of Christ, mostly dating from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. These were fascinating, unprotected by glass so the brushwork and details could be easily examined. Figures were presented in the dress of the artists´ time, resulting in some obvious anachronisms. A church in the background of a picture of Christ bore stone crosses, for example. I noticed that the mens´ footwear was principally thin boots slipped into heavy wood-soled sandals, a detail I hadn´t heard of before. Anyway, it was an impressive collection for such a small town, and it took me quite a while to finish going through it.

In the second-to-last room, a helpful staffer offered supplemental information. His English was excellent, but easily explained since he turned out to have spent several years living in Toronto!

After the museum, I went through the Sé, next door. The main church was only typically impressive fore a European church of its size, and the cloister next door was worthy of a photograph for its lemon trees but otherwise unremarkable. The cathedral also had a museum of its own in its attic, and this boasted many more fine examples of religious art from the 17th to 19th centuries.

When I left the cathedral it was almost noon, and I headed towards the Taberna Typica Quarto-Feira for lunch. Actually, it was raining at the time so I was in a hurry and got lost in the medieval side streets, but a helpful local set me straight (with French as our common language).

After a brief delay (the restaurant only opens for lunch at 12:30, apparently typical for Portugal,) I enjoyed a wonderful meal of pork chops flavoured with sea salt and garlic, grilled, and served with creamed spinach, rice and french fries, and the aforementioned vinho tinto. Which I´ve probably had about enough of, come to think of it... Time to head out.
posted by Tom at 3:05 PM | link |