CHAPTER VI
CONVENTS AND PALACES
Belem.
In palaces and convents, churches, castles, towers, crumbling Roman ruins, fine country houses, Portugal is as rich as any land. The chief attraction of the Palacio das Necessidades at Lisbon is its splendid grounds, now open to the public. From the Tagus the most imposing building is the great mass of the Church of S. Vicente, which the morbid visit to see the Princes and Kings of Portugal in their glass-covered coffins. Of Lisbon’s ancient buildings that which most forcibly appeals to eye and imagination is the ruined Carmo, now serving as an archaeological museum, standing so nobly over the city and carrying the mind back to the days of Nun’ Alvares Pereira, one of the greatest figures of all time. But the finest building of Lisbon—since a street now connects with the capital what was formerly a separate village, is the Church and Convent of Belem. The village still, however, maintains a certain individuality, with its wide common surrounded by low pink-washed houses and primitive arcades, and its statue of Affonso d’Albuquerque perched, like St. Simeon Stylites, on a high pillar, and looking out across the Tagus to the Atlantic, its peculiar square Tower of Belem jutting out into the river and, above all, the church of the Convent, which in its perfect proportions and ancient grey colouring is one of the most beautiful of the world’s buildings. To realise its beauty, the church must not be seen too near, since the famous doorway will seem to many excessively ornamented in its wealth of detail. But from the river seen in spring above the flowering Judas trees, or above the yellowing leaves in autumn, it might be some old Oxford college. And the interior is worthy of such beauty, in spite of the Manoeline style, which does its best to spoil the noble Gothic, in relation to which it stands as ivy to the trunk of a tree. The pillars go straight up without a break to a height of nearly a hundred feet, and about the whole place is a sense of spaciousness and fine proportion which the Manoeline decoration cannot mar. In little chapels round the church are the tombs of King Manoel I (who built the Convent to celebrate the voyage of Vasco da Gama, the buildings thus corresponding in stone to the Lusiads of Camões: ceci n’a pas tué cela); of his son King João III, variously judged by historians as a saint or a simpleton (it is not for nothing that the Spanish word for “blessed,” bendito, means also a fool: cf. the English “silly,” derived from the German selig); of Camões and of Vasco da Gama (the tomb is his, but there was a mistake in the bones when they were transferred thither from Vidigueira in 1880).
CONVENTO DE JERONYMOS, BELEM
Cintra.
From Lisbon to Cintra is but a step, and it is equally pleasant to walk or drive or ride, but the train will take you there in little over half-an-hour. What strikes everyone on arriving at the village is the curious prominence of the two uncouth gigantic chimneys of the palace. This palace is now an archaeological museum, but the interest still centres in the legends and history and natural beauty of its walls, for the most part lined with fine old azulejos. The magpies of the ceiling in the Sala das Pegas have not been whitewashed away, the Sala dos Cisnes still keeps its swans, and the coats of arms cover the walls of the Sala dos Cervos, a stag in each case supporting the arms of the old families of Portugal—
Pois com esforços e leaes
Serviços foram ganhados:
Com estes e outros taes