beat the brochure

The walled city of Evora is just 70 miles east of Lisbon in Portugal and has been a World Heritage Site since 1986. The city has many historical religious sites; in fact many of its hotels are former convents. It’s a great place to visit on your cheap holiday to Portugal.

For those of you who love visiting old churches or buildings of religious interest then you’re in for a treat. Evora is home to a Roman Temple – or its ruins – The Temple of Diana, a cathedral and several churches. Of course you can’t miss Igreja Real de Sao Francisco – the Royal Church of St Francis – a Catholic denomination church. Its Capela dos Ossos or Chapel of Bones is not for the faint hearted as whole walls and pillars are covered in human skulls and other bones all cemented in place.

The church was built in the 15th/early 16th century in Gothic style. The Capela dos Ossos was the creation of the 16th century Franciscan monks as a solution to a problem. It was a practical solution as space in the city was taken up by 42 cemeteries. The monks decided to move all the bones from the cemeteries to one consecrated chapel … It is said that the monks saw the display of the skulls and bones as a way to contemplate and communicate the inevitable end for us all – hence the walls and pillars.

The main Church of St Francis is opulent with golden altars and blue tile walls. Next door in the Chapel entered via a large arch which has a welcoming (really?) rhyme ‘nos ossos que aqui estamos pelos vossos esperamos’ which translates to ‘Our bones that are here wait for yours’. This certainly reminds visitors of their own mortality – are you ready for it?

It’s been estimated that there are somewhere in the region of 5,000 skeletons in the Chapel. According to legend, the bones are those of soldiers from some major battle – unnamed – or victims of a plague. But the reality is more likely to be that they are just ordinary people who lived in the area and were buried in Evora’s cemeteries.

The bones of the monks aren’t part of this ‘display’ but are kept in a white coffin in the Chapel. There are two complete corpses as well as all the bones. These are hung high on the walls. No one knows who they were but again they have been immortalised in legend or stories: one suggests they were an adulterous man and his infant son cursed by his jealous wife!

The altar with its crucifix has a reminder for all visitors of how to overcome death: the ceiling is painted with scenes and Latin phrases such as ‘I leave but I don’t die,’ ‘I die in light’ and ‘the day that I die is better than the day that I was born’. Eerie…