Cruising down Portugal’s spectacular and empty tollways made it a quick couple of hours to arrive in the country’s famed university town. The gray skies grew darker soon after we’d settled in and began wandering the pedestrianized old center, but our couple of days in town gave us enough respite from rain and dreariness to grant us a good look around.
While Coimbra rises prettily above the Mondego River, and offers an array of interesting sounding museums, it is the medieval university campus and the remaining alleys, arches, towers, and corners of the old town that we found most worth visiting. The university’s oldest buildings surround a huge patio with a series of monumental entrances to the respective parts of the building. Established in the first half of the 16th c., the highlight continues to be the stupendous Joanina Library, with its treasure trove of old books. The university’s baroque chapel is impressive, and the Graduates’ hall, previously an examination hall, is still used to ring in the academic year, as well as to house doctoral dissertation defenses. The only real drawback is the staggering number of tour groups swarming through all these areas, complete with their loud and pushy tour leaders.
We explored the areas around the old university, and the warren of tiny alleys in the “low” city, radiating from the Praca da Portagem and the lovely Praca do Comercio. The Old Cathedral shows off its Moorish antecedents, while the New Cathedral, while still rather old, looks more sober. We knowingly skipped museums and instead sat, people-watched, and got lost in the labyrinthine old town. Across the river we perused the old Convent of Santa Clara, which eventually flooded, thus lies in ruins, while the newer convent looks down from higher up the banks. All around town formally clad students were busy initiating the entering class with all manner of crazy pranks, as well as plenty of drinking. On the whole an interesting town, but perhaps a tad oversold.
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