From Lisbon: Alentejo – Évora, Chapel of Bones & Monsaraz Castle

Évora's historic centre has been inhabited continuously for 5,000 years — the Romans called it Liberalitas Julia and made it one of the most important cities in Lusitania. The Temple of Diana (c.1st century AD) is the best-preserved Roman temple in Portugal: 14 Corinthian granite columns with marble capitals still standing to almost full height in the centre of the medieval city. The guide covers 2,000 years of Évora's history: the Moorish occupation (711–1166), the reconquest by the Portuguese knight Geraldo Sem Pavor (Gerald the Fearless), and the extraordinary period in the 15th century when the Portuguese royal court relocated to Évora and the city became a centre of Renaissance learning. The Cathedral of Évora (begun 1186) is the largest Romanesque cathedral in Portugal; its cloister contains Gothic sculpture of exceptional quality. The Chapel of Bones is in the Church of São Francisco — a room constructed in the 16th century by Franciscan monks from the bones of approximately 5,000 individuals exhumed from Évora's overcrowded cemeteries. The inscription above the door: 'Nós ossos que aqui estamos, pelos vossos esperamos' — 'We bones here are waiting for yours.'

Monsaraz sits on a granite hill 342 metres above the Alentejo plain — a medieval frontier castle village that has been fortified since prehistoric times (a significant Bronze Age settlement existed here) and whose current walls date to the 14th-century reconstruction under King Afonso IV. The castle keep and enceinte walls are the finest example of medieval military architecture in the Alentejo: the keep's battlements offer a 360-degree view over the vast plain, the River Guadiana (the Portuguese-Spanish border) and the Alqueva reservoir, created in 2002 by damming the Guadiana and now the largest artificial lake in Europe. The medieval village within the walls is extraordinarily preserved: granite-paved streets, whitewashed houses, a Roman menhir standing in the main square (moved here when its original site was flooded by Alqueva), and the village bullring — the oldest in Portugal — built inside the castle enceinte. The guide covers the Alentejo's extraordinary prehistoric heritage: the region contains the highest concentration of megalithic monuments in the Iberian Peninsula.