Monastery of São Vicente de Fora

Church · GraçaLisbon,Portugal

A white monastery above Alfama with cloisters tiled in La Fontaine's fables and almost every Braganza monarch in a former dining hall.

São Vicente de Fora is a white monastery on the ridge above Alfama, and three things inside it are worth the climb. Its cloisters are lined in blue and white tile, and the panels illustrate La Fontaine's fables, one scene to an arch. Off them is a long hall holding almost every monarch of the House of Braganza, from João IV to Manuel II, in plain stone chests set in rows. Stairs go up to a roof terrace over the Alfama roofs, the Pantheon dome and the river. The house is centuries older than the tombs in it. Afonso Henriques founded it in 1147, outside the walls, and the entrance hall you come through is tiled with panels of that siege and of the kings who followed. Below the cloisters you can go down into the cistern, twelfth-century and the one piece of the medieval monastery still standing, which held the rainwater the community lived on. The sacristy off it is lined floor to ceiling in coloured marble. Among the Braganzas upstairs lies Catherine, the queen who married Charles II of England and is credited with taking tea-drinking to London.

Worth knowing

Good to know

The ticketed half has its own door — the church is free and on the left, while the cloisters, pantheon and roof are entered elsewhere, so many see only the free half.
Go up to the roof for the domes — the terrace puts you level with the Pantheon's dome across the rooftops, and you cannot see it this way from street level in this quarter.
Two Braganzas are missing — Maria I lies in the Estrela basilica and Pedro IV was moved to Brazil in 1972, so the rows here are not quite the whole dynasty.

Things to do

1
Read a fable off the cloister wall
Walk the cloister and pick one panel. Each shows a single La Fontaine fable, such as the fox and the crow or the lion and the mouse, painted in blue on white with a flowered border. You can work out the story from the picture alone, and there are thirty-eight panels to do it with.
2
Walk the length of the royal hall
Go into the old refectory and take it end to end. Tombs stand in rows along a room designed for tables, with the dynasty in rough chronological order. Reading the dates as you walk gives you the whole span of the Braganzas, from the seventeenth century to a king who died in England in 1932.
3
Come out onto the roof
Climb the last stairs to the terrace. You are level with the rooftops of Alfama on one side and looking straight across at the Pantheon's dome on the other, with the river beyond. The terrace is the only place in this quarter that gives you the dome, the rooftops and the water in a single view.