Évora and Cooking at Sofia's House
Alluring Alentejo: Day 4
Wednesday, 9 October 2024
This morning we’re off see the Roman Temple, streets and squares of Évora. And yes, it’s raining quite hard.
It’s hard to describe how amazing it is to see this Roman Temple built and dedicated to Augustus in the 1st Century still standing right in the middle of the town.
As we took shelter from the rain on the front steps of a medieval Roman Catholic Church, I could not take my eyes off the the Temple — trying to imagine the construction of it, what the builders were like, and just how astounding it is that this was built around the same time that Jesus Christ walked among us on the other side of the Mediterranean.
The detailed carvings of the decorative marble pieces under and atop the granite columns remain in remarkably good condition despite being two thousand years old.
Did I mention it was a very wet day?
Portugal produced some of the finest early mariners in the world and the ancient navigational instrument called the astrolabe appears over and over again in carvings, paintings, sculptures, flags, etc. For example, here is an astrolabe on a church right here in Evora:
The Chapel of Bones is one of the best-known monuments in Évora. Built by Franciscan friars in the 16th century, an estimated 5,000 corpses were exhumed to decorate the walls of the chapel. The bones, which came from ordinary people who were buried in Évora's medieval cemeteries, were arranged by the Franciscans in a variety of patterns. Super creepy but also fascinating.
The cemeteries were overflowing and space was needed, so the monks, thought it best to put the older bones on displace. They thought this would provide Évora, a town noted for its wealth in the early 1600s, with a helpful place to meditate on the transience of material things in the undeniable presence of death. This is made clear by the thought-provoking message above the chapel door: “Nós ossos que aqui estamos, pelos vossos esperamos,” or: “We bones, are here, waiting for yours.”
Something each of us noticed immediately was how small the skulls were. 13th century humans were tiny, tiny people with skulls about the size of an infant today.
A fascinating, but very odd, place of worship.
From here, we headed to Sofia’s house to make our own lunch at the Portuguese Cooking School.
This turned out to be a wonderful experience. Sofia and her son taught us a variety of basic Portuguese cooking techniques and recipes that we could easily replicate at home and since returning home, we have indeed done exactly that. It really was a blast.
Thank you Sofia and staff for a wonderful experience!
We then drove back to Vila Viçosa and had an enjoyable dinner on our own. Tomorrow, we’re off to Monsaraz — a picturesque village perched on a hilltop.