From Coimbra we spent a couple of days touring what turned out to be some of the most impressive sights on the trip. First the unbelievably gorgeous complex that is the Convento de Cristo in Tomar. Founded by the Knights Templar, the complex is a dizzying array of cloisters, castle, a spectacular Rotunda which was the original Templars’ church, along with gardens, portals, royal quarters(from the time when it also housed royals), and all bedecked with dazzling Manueline details. All calculated to visually overcome the visitor—and headily effective! Unlike Coimbra, there were perhaps 20 other visitors in the entire complex, which lent the whole experience that wondrous historical time warp, when one’s mind –or mine, at least—, daydreams of “how it must have been/looked way back when”. Nothing short of WOW, and a place every visitor to Portugal should definitely visit.
From Tomar we continued on to the small town of Batalha, anchored by its huge Gothic cathedral and Dominican abbey. We also found a terrific place to stay(www.hotelcasadoouteiro.com), with a stellar view over the abbey, particularly gorgeous in the early evening. Again, a paucity of visitors made it that much more enjoyable to savor the unbelievable amount of details. The cathedral has a beautiful Founder’s chapel where Joao I and his wife Philippa of Lancaster along with their son Henry the Navigator are buried. The abbey was built to celebrate a victory over the Spanish that secured Portuguese independence in the late 14th c. The Manueline details in the cloister are stunning, as are the breathtaking unfinished chapels, where the intricate stonework around the monumental inner portal stands virtually unscathed, despite being open to all-weather skies.
From Batalha we made a day trip to the nearby town of Alcobaca(that’s with a c cedilla, still handily evading me). The site of a huge Cistercian monastery, founded in the mid 12th c., this monastery, like Batalha, was built to commemorate a victory, this time by Portugal’s first king, Afonso Henriques over the Moors. It was added to by King Dinis, whose Cloister of Silence is one of the highlights of the complex. The church is the country’s largest, and is also the site of the tombs of Pedro, son of Afonso IV, and his lover, Ines. There is a gruesome story connected to Pedro and Ines, in that Pedro was first married to Constanza of Castile, but fell madly in love with her lady in waiting, Ines. When Constanza died only a few years later, Pedro went to live with Ines, refusing his father’s efforts to remarry him to another. Afonso so distrusted Ines and her Spanish family and their proximity to Pedro, that he finally had her murdered. Pedro avenged her death by having the killers’ hearts torn out. He then proclaimed that he’d been married to Ines, had her body exhumed and crowned, and then culminated this horror by forcing his court to bow to her and kiss her decomposed hand. Nasty stuff in a beautiful place!
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