It is not without interest to compare the plan of this palace or monastery with the more famous Escorial. Both cover almost exactly the same area,[170] but while in the Escorial the church is thrust back at the end of a vast patio, here it is brought forward to the very front. There the royal palace occupies only a comparatively small area in the north-west corner of the site, and the monastic part the whole lying south of the entrance patio and of the church; here the monastic part is thrust back almost out of sight, and the palace stretches all along the west front except where it is interrupted in the middle by the church.
Indeed the two buildings differ from one another much as did the characters of their builders. The gloomy fanaticism of Philip of Spain is exemplified by the preponderance of the monastic buildings no less than by his own small dark bed-closet opening only to the church close to the high altar. João v., pleasure-loving and luxurious, pushed the friars to the back, and made his own and the queen's rooms the most prominent part of the whole building, and one cannot but feel that, though a monastery had to be built to fulfil a vow, the king was actuated not so much by religious zeal as by an ostentatious megalomania which led him to try and surpass the size of the Escorial.
To take the plan rather more in detail. The west front, about 740 feet long, is flanked by huge square projecting pavilions. The king's and the queen's apartments are each entered by rather low and insignificant doorways in the middle of the long straight blocks which join these pavilions to the church. These doors lead under the palace to large square courtyards, one on each side of the church, and forming on the ground floor a cloister with a well-designed arcading of round arches, separated by Roman Doric shafts. The king's and the queen's blocks are practically identical, except that in the king's a great oval hall called the Sala dos actos takes the place of some smaller rooms between the cloister and the outer wall.
Between these blocks stands the church reached by a great flight of steps. It has a nave and aisles of three large and one small bay, a dome at the crossing, and transepts and chancel ending in apses. In front, flanking towers projecting beyond the aisles are united by a long entrance porch.
Between the secular and the monastic parts a great corridor runs north and south, and immediately beyond it a range of great halls, including the refectory at the north end and the chapter-house at the south. Further east the great central court with its surrounding cells divides the monastic entrance and great stair from such domestic buildings as the kitchen, the bakery, and the lavatory. Four stories of cells occupy the whole east side.
Though some parts of the palace and monastery such as the two entrance courts, the library, and the interior of the church, may be better than might have been expected from the date, it is quite impossible to speak at all highly of the building as a whole.
It is nearly all of the same height with flat paved roofs; indeed the only breaks are the corner pavilions and the towers and dome of the church.
The west side consists of two monotonous blocks, one on each side of the church, with three stories of windows. At either end is a great square projecting mass, rusticated on the lowest floor, with short pilaster strips between the windows on the first, and Corinthian pilasters on the second. The poor cornice is surmounted by a low attic, within which rises a hideous ogee plastered roof. ([Fig. 100].)
The church in the centre loses much by not rising above the rest of the front, and the two towers, though graceful enough in outline, are poor in detail, and are finished off with a very ugly combination of hollow curves and bulbous domes.