Cintra.
Some eighteen miles from Lisbon, several sharp granite peaks rise high above an undulating tableland. Two of these are encircled by the old Moorish fortification which climbs up and down over huge granite boulders, and on a projecting spur near their foot, and to the north, there stands the old palace of Cintra. As long as the Walis ruled at Lisbon, it was to Cintra that they came in summer for hunting and cool air, and some part at least of their palace seems to have survived till to-day.
Cintra was first taken by Alfonso vi. of Castile and Leon in 1093—to be soon lost and retaken by Count Henry of Burgundy sixteen years later, but was not permanently held by the Christians till Affonso Henriques expelled the Moors in 1147. The Palace of the Walis was soon granted by him to Gualdim Paes, the famous grand master of the Templars, and was held by his successors till it was given to Dom Diniz's queen, St. Isabel. She died in 1336, when the palace returned to the Order of Christ—which had meanwhile been formed out of the suppressed Order of the Temple—only to be granted to Dona Beatriz, the wife of D. Affonso iv., in exchange for her possessions at Ega and at Torre de Murta. Dom João i. granted the palace in 1385 to Dom Henrique de Vilhena, but he soon sided with the Spaniards, for he was of Spanish birth, his possessions were confiscated and Cintra returned to the Crown. Some of the previous kings may have done something to the palace, but it was King João who first made it one of the chief royal residences, and who built a very large part of it.
A few of the walls have been examined by taking off the plaster, and have been found to be built in the usual Arab manner, courses of rubble bonded at intervals with bands of thin bricks two or three courses deep. Such are the back wall of the entrance hall and a thick wall near the kitchen. Outside all the walls are plastered, all the older windows, of one or two lights, are enclosed in square frames—for the later windows of Dom Manoel's time are far more elaborate and fantastic—and most of the walls end in typical Moorish battlements. High above the dark tile roofs there tower the two strange kitchen chimneys, huge conical spires ending in round funnels, now all plastered, but once covered with a pattern of green and white tiles.
The whole is so extremely complicated that without a plan it would be almost useless to attempt a description. Speaking roughly, all that lies to the west of the Porte Cochère which leads from the entrance court through to the kitchen court and stables beyond is, with certain alterations and additions, the work of Dom João, and all that lies to the east is the work of Dom Manoel, added during the first years of the sixteenth century. Entering through a pointed gateway, one finds oneself in a long and irregular courtyard, having on the right hand a long low building in which live the various lesser palace officials, and on the left, first a comparatively modern projecting building in which live the ladies-in-waiting, then somewhat further back the rooms of the controller of the palace and his office. From the front wall of this office, which itself juts out some feet into the courtyard, there runs eastwards a high balustraded terrace reaching as far as another slightly projecting wing, and approached by a great flight of steps at its western end. Not far beyond the east end of the terrace an inclined road leads to the Porte Cochère, and beyond it are the large additions made by Dom Manoel. ([Fig. 44].)
On this terrace stands the main front of the palace. Below are four large pointed arches, and above five beautiful windows lighting the great Sala dos Cysnes or Swan Hall. Originally these four arches were open and led into a large vaulted hall; now they are all built up—perhaps by Dona Maria i. after the great earthquake—three having small two-light windows, and one a large door, the chief entrance to the palace. In the back wall of this hall may still be seen three windows which must have existed before it was built, for what is now their inner side was evidently at first their outer; and this wall is one of those found to be built in the Arab manner, so that clearly Dom João's hall was built in front of a part of the Walis' palace, a part which has quite disappeared except for this wall.
From the east end of this lower hall a straight stair, which looks as if it had once been an outside stair, leads up to a winding stair by which another hall is reached, whose floor lies at a level of about 26 feet above the terrace.[94] From this hall, which may be of later date than Dom João's time, a door leads down to the central pateo or courtyard, or else going up a few steps the way goes through a smaller square room, once an open verandah, through a wide doorway inserted by Dom Manoel into the great Swan Hall. This hall, the largest room in the palace, measuring about 80 feet long by 25 wide, is so called from the swans painted in the eight-sided panels of its wonderful roof. The story is that while the palace was still building ambassadors came to the king from the duke of Burgundy asking for the hand of his daughter Isabel. Among other presents they brought some swans, which so pleased the young princess that she made them collars of red velvet and persuaded her father to build for them a long narrow tank in the central court just under the north windows of this hall. Here she used to feed them till she went away to Flanders, and from love of his daughter King João had the swans with their collars painted on the ceiling of the hall. The swans may still be seen, but not those painted for Dom João, for all the mouldings clearly show that the present ceiling was reconstructed some centuries later. The hall is lit by five windows looking south across the entrance court to the Moorish castle on the hill beyond, and by three looking over the swan tank into the central pateo.
These windows, and indeed all those in Dom João's part of the palace, are very like each other. They are nearly all of two lights—never of more—and are made of white marble. In every case there is a square-headed moulded frame enclosing the whole window, the outer mouldings of this frame resting on small semicircular corbels, and having Gothic bases. Inside this framework stand three slender shafts, with simple bases and carved capitals. These capitals are not at all unlike French capitals of the thirteenth century, but are really of a common Moorish pattern often found elsewhere, as in the Alhambra. On them, moulded at the ends, but not in front or behind, rest abaci, from which spring stilted arches. ([Fig. 45].)
Each arch is delicately moulded and elaborately cusped, but, though in some cases—for the shape varies in almost every window—each individual cusp may have the look of a Gothic trefoil, the arrangement is not Gothic at all. There are far more than are ever found in a Gothic window, sometimes as many as eleven, and they usually begin at the bottom with a whole instead of a half cusp. From the centre of each abacus, cutting across the arch mouldings, another moulding runs up, which being returned across the top encloses the upper part of each light in a smaller square frame. It is this square frame which more than anything else gives these windows their Eastern look, and it has been shown how often, and indeed almost universally a square framing was put round doorways all through the last Gothic period.