A 15 minute walk this morning into the walled town of Évora, with its whitewashed houses, Gothic architecture and the Chapel of Bones, which was our first place to visit.
The Chapel gets its name because the interior walls are covered and decorated with human skulls and bones. 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.
We then strolled through the cobbled streets to the Roman Temple built by the Romans in honour of Augustus in the first century. The temple is located in the central square of Évora, in a high point if the city where you can look down on the houses and over the countryside.
Lunch was scrambled egg on toast Portugese style in a chilled out cafe.
Then a walk back to the van and it had warmed up so we got the chairs out and sat in the sun.
