12/12: Charming Coimbra: Elevator/Funicular, Cathedrals & Upper Town

About two months ago I returned from being away on vacation with a friend in New Zealand and Australia for 3.5 weeks. In case you also want to follow that really fun trip, here's a link to the newest blog: www.bergersadventures7.blogspot.com

After arriving in the Portuguese college town of Coimbra too late the previous day to see any of the sights except to attend a fabulous fado concert, Steven and I began exploring the Old Town. We began in the Largo de la Portagem, the main square, where there was a statue of the prime minister who, in 1834, shut down the city's convents and monasteries, thus earning the nickname 'friar killer.'

On the other side of the square was a fancy pink bank building and the Hotel Astoria behind it, both from circa 1900.

Even though it was near mid-December, the bird-of-paradise plant was in full bloom!

A popular local place for coffee on the square was Cafe Montanha that had a large brass palm tree inside.

What we later found to be also sold in many cafes in Coimbra were these pastels de Santa Clara, pastries made with almonds and marmalade. They looked far yummier before I knew what they included!

Steven and I had seen some cork products while on our day trip to Sintra near Lisbon but there was a far greater selection here of cork stores in Coimbra. I had so much fun buying a  number of small items for myself and gifts for others back home.

I think the mammoth mural on the side of the building depicted Sigmund Freud but wondered why it was there in Coimbra.

The attractive square called Praca do Comercio was literally the place of commerce. As it was originally located just outside the city walls, it served as a kind of medieval duty-free zone where shopkeepers could trade without having to pay taxes. The streets leading away from the square had been named after the products made or sold there. It was clear to see that this part of town had seen better days as many of the storefronts were boarded up.

The Casa de Sorte was one of the country's much loved lottery shops as well as a convenient place to buy stamps!

Nearby steps led up through an ancient arched gateway into the Old City and to the town's cathedral and famous university. The Arco de Almedina or Gate to the Medina in Arabic by the Moors acted as double gate with a 90 degree kink in the middle for easier defense. According to travel writer Rick Steves, in times of attack, soldiers used two holes in the ceiling to pour boiling oil onto the attacking Moors! 

After seeing the vibrant men's hat wear store so recently in Sevilla, Spain, it was rather sad to come across the Bragas men's store that sold mostly hats and ties as it, too, looked rather down on its luck. 

The Church of Santa Cruz was founded in 1131 with the support of King Afonso Henriques and was modified several centuries later. What a grand facade it had!

Before entering the church, we listened for a good while as university students displayed their musical talents for passersby to enjoy. 

The church was lavishly decorated with 18th century tiles that told the stories of the discovery of the Holy Cross. Those blue tiles had me agog as they were just out of this world. Little did we know then we'd soon come across many more equally spectacular tiled churches in Porto, our next and final stop in Portugal. 

The coffeehouse was attached to the church, not by mistake but by design as it was originally built as a church. However, it was abandoned in the 1830s when the government took possession of many grand religious buildings and their surrounding property. The cafe was a haunt of the town's intellectuals during the 19th century. The former altar was now used for lectures, poetry readings and concerts while the confessional had been converted into the women's restroom!

It's hard to see because it was a rather dreary day but the buildings in the square all had exquisite exterior tiles. 

City Hall:

From the church square we kept walking toward the Mercado Municipal or covered market,

passing by a pretty park with a fountain that had once been a monastery cloister and Renaissance garden.

At last the market:

Our noses easily led us to the section where fresh fish and dried cod were sold! The Portuguese are the world's biggest consumers of cod but, because cod is no longer available in nearby waters, it's imported from Norway.

Just outside the market was the Elevador do Mercado, a combination elevator/funicular that took us quickly up the long steep hill for a very nominal fee rather than walking up a gazillion steps! 

The young attendant said he worked from 7 am until 9 pm and that he was especially busy in the summertime when tourists frequent Coimbra. Otherwise, university students whose campus we'd see in a minute or two use it as do residents living there and shop in the market down below. 

A view of the covered market we'd just visited:

We had to stop halfway to transfer to the funicular for the final haul to the upper part of Coimbra. 

We still had pretty views of Coimbra even thought it was a cloudy day.

Before we reached the university buildings, we noticed a fraternity house called the Real Republica Cosarios das Ilhas or Royal Commune of the Island Pirates!! There was a faded skull and crossbones on the wall that linked McDonald's and the G8, the group of the world's most powerful nations. The small university frat houses or republicas were home to about a dozen students normally from the same town or region.

The Sé Nova or New Cathedral was originally a Jesuit church built slowly over a hundred years between 1598 and 1698. When the Jesuits were expelled from Portugal by the Marquis de Pombal in 1759, Sé Nova became vacant and in 1772 cathedral status was transferred from the smaller Old Cathedral to the larger Sé Nova, located at the top of the hill in the historic higher part of the city called Alta de Coimbra. 

The Chapel of Our Lady of Good Death:

The next chapel had been completely taken over by a  very intricate Nativity Scene, complete with flashing lights!

To literally see more of the Chapel of St. Ignatius of Loyola, we had to put some money in a box for it to light up!

Across from the cathedral was the large fascist-style university square for the University of Coimbra that was founded in 1290 and modeled after Europe's first university in Bologna, Italy, in 1139. The Portuguese dictator Antonio Salazar tore down half of Coimbra's Old Town to build these university halls in what has been called one of the worst cultural crimes in the country's history.

The utilitarian buildings contained the faculties of law, letters, medicine, science and the library.

We had come to upper Coimbra to see primarily the city's famous university but got happily sidelined touring the Machado Museum and subterranean Roman ruins. They are the subject of the next post. We returned to the university which occupied a stately former royal palace from the time when Coimbra was capital of Portugal. When it was founded in 1290, it offered studies in law, medicine, grammar (!!) and logic. As seafaring became more important to the small nation, astronomy and geometry were also taught. It is still the country's most respected university though Lisbon's is far larger. 

We walked through the university's Porta Ferrea where freshmen, traditionally wearing their black capes for the first time, pass through the Iron Gate to enroll. 

The university's most important sights faced the Old University Courtyard.

King Joao's Library:

St. Michael's Chapel:

The statue in the square was of King Joao III who permanently established the university in Coimbra and was responsible for modernizing Portugal's education system in the Renaissance style by empowering the Church. He allowed the Jesuits to be in charge of the university which became the center of Portugal's Inquisition. 

The black capes worn by local students originated with the capes worn by Jesuits and clergy during the Inquisition. 

The dreaded sound of the clock tower's bell was named the 'baby goat' for its nagging as it calls students to class. I was amused to read that the bell's clapper had been stolen on many occasions as no bell meant no class and no class meant big party! A larger bell aka 'the big goat' rings only on formal, important occasions. 

Other views of the impressive courtyard:

We could have taken a tour of the university but, after being inside for so long visiting the museum and ruins, we decided to pass on it. 

From the courtyard we had great views of the Mondego River.

As we left the university, I wasn't sure initially whether these were students or nuns; they turned out to be the latter!

On the other side of these massive walls were the Roman ruins we'd seen before the museum.

The ruins from another angle:

We walked through the Upper Town downhill along ancient Roman narrow streets toward the Se Velha or Old Cathedral.

Windows that had white-paper squares and diamonds indicated that there was a student room to rent.

As we'd seen so often in churches throughout Spain, Coimbra's Old Cathedral repeated the same old story: Christians built a church on a pre-Christian holy spot from the Visigoths in the 6th century, the Moors destroyed that church and constructed a mosque in the 8th century, and then the Christians evict the Moors in 1064 and built this church that was consecrated in 1184.

It was no mistake that the cathedral appeared like a church-fortress as it was built in the middle of the Reconquista when the Moors, though the Moors had been pushed out, were still considered a risk. The Moorish-style columns and its fortified and practical facade with the arrow slits had no Christian motifs.

At the start of the nave, we saw holy water font shells that had been a 19th century gift from Sri Lanka, a country Steven and I are hoping to visit next spring as part of a longer trip to India, Bhutan, Tibet and other countries in Asia.

The walls were covered with some of the oldest tiles in the country and had been imported from Sevilla, Spain. 

The sculpture was of the Virgin of the Rosary.

I loved reading the story Rick Steves told behind this painting of Queen Isabel also called St. Elizabeth. The 13th Hungarian princess who had family ties to Portugal was known as always giving bread to the poor even though the king didn't like her doing so. One day she was occupied doling out bread from her skirt when the king arrived home early from a trip. Noticing she had pulled up her skirt and suspecting it was to hide the bread, he asked her what was inside. The queen refused to lie and lowered the skirt revealing, not bread, but miraculously roses that the bread had turned into! She was canonized as a saint in 1625 for this amazing act.

The Main Altar was just one of three in the church. It was described as a fine example of the late Flamboyant Gothic style and made by Flemish artists around 1500.

The Renaissance-style Chapel of the Holy Sacrament from 1586 contained magnificent statues of Jesus and the Apostles as well as the Evangelists and Madonna with Child. 

The work was sculpted by Jean de Rouen who was responsible for many of the sculptures we'd just seen in the Machado Museum and is the subject of the next post. If you look carefully, you'll observe that all ten Apostles are looking at Jesus as he talks. The reason there were only ten and not twelve Apostles was the Renaissance desire for proportion and balance was more important than fact which meant there was only room for ten!

To the left of the main altar was the Chapel of St. Peter with Peter shown as being crucified upside down!

The peaceful cloister was the oldest Gothic one in Portugal.

From the cloister, we had lovely views of the cathedral's dome.

The tomb from 1064 in the cloister belonged to Coimbra's first Christian governor after the Reconquista period. 

There was such a low literacy rate in Portugal when the cathedral was being constructed that the workers had carve a number assigned to them to prove they had done the work and would therefore get paid! I think that was the first time we'd ever seen that happen.

Once back outside again, we walked around to the North Portal which was added in Renaissance times. As it had been made using soft limestone, it was inexpensive and an easy material to carve; however, it hasn't worn well.

From the busy Cathedral Square with its many cafes, we took the very steep stairway down towards the center of town where we'd started our day several hours ago.

The street was called Rua Quebra Costas or the Street of Broken Ribs as, at one time, there were no steps here and it was literally the street of broken ribs. You can imagine how dangerous this is when, during a strong rain, this street becomes a river!

The poster advertised the really enjoyable fado concert we'd listened to the night before at Fado ao Centro.

This was the charming statue of Tricana, the term given to a local woman wearing traditional folk clothing resting after a trip to the well. She represented the target of fado love songs and student Romeos!

We'd arrived back at the Almedina Gate and Tower that we'd seen near the beginning of our exploration of Coimbra that morning. It was the busiest and most important point of access for both military and civilian access within the city walls and was located in the lowest part of the walls. It was interesting to see from such a different perspective than we had that morning.

A few steps further down was this monument to fado featuring the Coimbra-style Portuguese guitar draped with both the cape of a  male student and the shawl of a woman. The bronze statue celebrated how fado connected the all male at the time university world with Coimbra's women. Steves reported that locals say a " good musician plays his guitar with art and passion, as if loving a woman."

We were so glad we'd included a stop in Coimbra as there was so much to enjoy in the charming town.

Next post: We'd made a detour before seeing the University of Coimbra and Old Cathedral to see some pretty interesting ruins and the very, very good Machado Museum.

Posted on May 28th, 2019, from our home away from home every year in a cabin at Grayton Beach State Park on Florida's Panhandle.