Évora

Overview

Évora is a museum you can walk across in twenty minutes, still lived in. Inside a ring of medieval walls on a low hill in the Alentejo plain are a Roman temple, a Gothic cathedral, a Jesuit university of 1559, palaces where the Aviz kings held court, a chapel lined with human bones and a square where the whole town meets, which is why UNESCO listed the centre in 1986 and why Évora, with Liepāja in Latvia, will be European Capital of Culture in 2027.

It is also one of the hottest cities in Portugal, with a record of 45.4 °C and summer heatwaves that empty the streets between two and four, a university town of 54,000 with a student crowd out of proportion to its size, and the base for the megaliths, the marble towns and Monsaraz in the rest of the Alentejo. Lisbon is an hour and a half away by coach; a day covers the centre, a night is better.

Neighbourhoods

Inside the walls

The whole listed centre is a single neighbourhood: the Praça do Giraldo, arcaded and fountained, is the social centre and the tourist office is on it; the Rua 5 de Outubro climbs from it to the cathedral square lined with cork and souvenir shops; the university quarter is to the east, the palaces around the temple, St Francis and the Jardim Público to the south. It is where every visitor sleeps and eats, and after dark it is quiet and lit.

Outside the walls

The bus terminal on the Avenida de São Sebastião, the railway station to the south and the Évora Plaza mall in the industrial zone are the practical edges; the Ecopista rail trail leaves from the station side, and the Alentejo begins immediately beyond.

See & do

The temple and the cathedral

The Roman temple, on the highest square in town, was built in the 1st century to the cult of Augustus and survived because the Middle Ages walled it into a castle keep and later used it as a butcher’s shop until 1836; fluted granite columns with marble capitals stand on the podium, wrongly but universally called the Temple of Diana. Across the square the cathedral, built mainly between 1280 and 1340 on the plan of Lisbon’s, is one of the great Gothic churches of the country, with the Apostles of about 1335 on its portal, a Manueline chapel, a baroque chancel and a roof you can climb for the view over the plain. The Frei Manuel do Cenáculo museum between them, in the old bishop’s palace, has 20,000 pieces from Roman finds to Flemish painting.

The Chapel of Bones

The church of St Francis, built at the turn of the 16th century in Gothic-Manueline style with a wide late-Gothic nave, has beside its entrance the Capela dos Ossos, whose walls and pillars are faced entirely with human skulls and long bones. It is small, it is not unique in the Algarve or the Alentejo, and the queue in summer is the longest in town.

Palaces, the university and the aqueduct

The university occupies the Jesuit college that Cardinal Henrique founded in 1559, closed by Pombal in 1779 and reopened in 1973, and its Mannerist cloister of azulejo-lined classrooms is open to visitors. The remains of Manuel I’s palace, where chroniclers say Vasco da Gama was given command of the India fleet in 1497, the Cadaval palace with its Tower of the Five Shields, the Lóios convent, a pousada since 1965, and the Renaissance fountain of 1556 at the Portas de Moura are a ten-minute circuit. The Água de Prata aqueduct, built by Francisco de Arruda, architect of the Belém Tower, between 1531 and 1537, marches 18 km into the city from the north-west with houses built between its arches.

Food & drink

Évora is the capital of Alentejo cooking: açorda, the bread and coriander soup with a poached egg; migas with pork; carne de porco à alentejana, pork with clams; and the convent sweets, sericaia, pão de rala, bolo podre and the egg-and-nut confections that the nuns invented. The wines of the Alentejo, the country’s best-loved reds, are on every list and some are expensive.

The restaurants are inside the walls at every price: small places serving authentic Alentejo cooking as a budget menu, mid-range tables around the Mouraria and the Rua da Moeda at €20 to €35 a head, a suckling-pig house, and a burger bar on the avenue for €2 to €12. The Saturday farmers’ market on the Praça 1º de Maio, 06:00 to 13:00, and the daily food market in the same square sell the cheeses, hams and honey; the Rua 5 de Outubro sells the cork.

Nightlife

The students make it: the bars around the Praça do Giraldo and in the lanes below the university are busy in term time, and quiet in August when the heat and the holidays empty the town. Otherwise the evening is a long dinner and the walk to the temple, lit at night, and a drink in a pousada bar, which is an accepted way to see the inside of one.

When to go

March to May. The best months: the plain is green and then in flower, the temperatures are in the twenties, and the students are in town.

June to September. Hot, often above 40 °C in July and August; Wikivoyage’s advice to carry water and stay out of the sun between 14:00 and 16:00 is the local practice, and the heat makes early mornings and late evenings the sightseeing hours.

October to November. Warm days, cool nights, the harvest in the vineyards around and the first rain; a good time.

December to February. Mild and wet with a few cold nights, the monuments empty and the hotels at their cheapest; 2027 will be the exception in every month.

Getting there

By coach. Rede Expressos from Lisbon takes between 1 h 20 and just over two hours for about €12.50, to the terminal on the Avenida de São Sebastião outside the walls; Rodoviária do Alentejo runs the regional buses from the same place.

By train. Intercidades trains from Lisbon and from Beja serve the station south of the centre, on a branch from Casa Branca; the line is being extended to Elvas and the Spanish border.

By car. The A6 from the Lisbon bridges runs east past Évora to Estremoz, Elvas and Badajoz, where it meets the Spanish A-5 from Madrid; the N114 from the west and the N18 from the east bring you in from the motorway. Lisbon airport is about 90 minutes.

Getting around

Walk; there is no real problem reaching any of the sights on foot, and the Trevo Linha Azul minibuses loop the historic centre every 15 minutes for anyone who would rather not. Horse carriages wait by the cathedral, taxis run around the clock from the stands, and bikes for the Ecopista, the rail trail out of town, are rented in the centre. Cars stay outside the walls.

Where to stay

The town is bed-and-breakfasts and small hotels inside the walls, most of them full in high season, and two grand conversions: the pousada in the Lóios convent beside the temple, from about €108 to €300, and the Convento do Espinheiro outside town from about €134. A boutique hotel in a 16th-century olive mill, a four-star with 92 rooms on the avenue, an Olive hotel at €51 to €92, an Ibis from €38 and guesthouses from €33 fill the range. Book ahead for spring weekends and, from 2027, for everything.

Practical info

The tourist office is at Praça do Giraldo 73. Shops keep hours of about 09:30 to 19:30 with a long lunch from 13:00 to 15:00, and the mall on the southern edge stays open through it. Heat is the one hazard: water, shade and a siesta in July and August. The souvenirs are cork, honey, olives, jams and sheepskin slippers. For money, plugs and pharmacies see the Portugal guide.

Places to visit

Archaeological Site

• Almendres Cromlech — Iberia’s largest stone circle, older than Stonehenge
• Roman Temple of Évora — The columns of a 1st-century temple beside the cathedral

Cathedral

• Cathedral of Évora — Portugal’s largest medieval cathedral, with a roof to walk on

Church

• Capela dos Ossos — The chapel walled with the bones of 5,000 people