Historic landmarks
Main monuments, best viewpoints, and what’s worth your time in Évora.
Évora Cathedral (Sé de Évora)
The largest medieval cathedral in Portugal, a granite Romanesque-Gothic fortress begun in 1186 — climb to the roof terraces for the best view over the white city and the Alentejo plain.
Chapel of Bones (Capela dos Ossos)
The famous 17th-century chapel lined with the bones and skulls of some 5,000 dead, built by Franciscan monks as a meditation on mortality — 'We bones that are here, for yours we wait.'
Roman Temple of Évora
Fourteen Corinthian columns from the 1st century AD, the best-preserved Roman temple in Portugal — standing improbably intact in the heart of the city it has watched for two thousand years.
Praça do Giraldo
Évora's living room since the Middle Ages — an arcaded square with a Renaissance marble fountain, cafés under the arches and eight streets of the old city radiating from it.
Aqueduct of Água de Prata
The 'Silver Water' aqueduct of the 1530s strides nine kilometres into the city, its final arches swallowed by houses and shops built right into the arcade — one of Évora's most photogenic quirks.
University of Évora
Portugal's second-oldest university, founded by Jesuits in 1559 — a Renaissance cloister of marble columns and classrooms walled in baroque azulejos, still teaching after four and a half centuries.
