Castle . convent of Beja The
Castle of Beja on top of the hill can be seen from afar and dominates the town. It was built, together with the town walls, under the reign of King
Diniz in the 13th century over the remains of a Roman
castellum that had been fortified by the
Moors. It consists of
battlement walls with four square corner towers and a central granite and marble
keep (
Torre de Menagem), with its height of 40 m the highest in Portugal. The top of the keep can be accessed via a spiral staircase with 197 steps, passing three
stellar-vaulted rooms with
Gothic windows. The
merlons of the
machicolation around the keep are topped with small pyramids. Standing on the battlements, one has a sensational panorama of the surrounding landscape. One can also glimpse the remains of the city walls that once had forty
turrets and five gates. The castle now houses a small military museum. The square in front of the castle is named after
Gonçalo Mendes da Maia or
O Lidador, a brave knight killed in the battle against the Moors in 1170.
Visigothic Museum The whitewashed Latin-Visigothic church of Santo Amaro, dedicated to
Saint Amaro, standing next to the castle, is one of just four pre-Romanesque churches left in Portugal. Some parts date from the 6th century and the interior columns and
capitals are carved with foliages and geometric designs from the 7th century. Especially the column with birds attacking a snake is of particular note. It houses today a small archaeological museum with Visigothic art.
Museum of Queen Eleanor The Museum of
Queen Eleanor regional museum was set up in 1927 and 1928 in the former Convent of Our Lady of the Conception (
Convento de Nossa Senhora da Conceição) of the
Order of Poor Ladies (dissolved in 1834), gradually expanding its collection. This
Franciscan convent had been established in 1459 by
Infante Fernando, Duke of Viseu and duke of Beja, next to his ducal palace. The construction continued until 1509. It is an impressive building with a late-
Gothic lattice-worked
architrave running along the building. This elegant architrave resembles somewhat the architrave of the
Monastery of Batalha, even if there are some early-
Manueline influences. Above the entrance porch on the western façade is an
ajimez window (a
mullioned window) in Manueline and Moorish style in the room of the
abbess, originating from the demolished palace of the dukes of Beja. The entrance door is embedded under an
ogee arch. A square bell-tower and a
spire with
crockets tower above the complex. The convent has been classified as a national monument. The entrance hall leads to the sumptuously gilded
Baroque chapel, consisting of a single nave under a semi-circular
vault. Three altars (one of the 17th century, dedicated to St. John the Evangelist, and two of the 18th century, dedicated to St. Christopher and St. Bento) are decorated with gilded woodwork (
talha dourada). The fourth altar, dedicated to St.
John the Baptist, was decorated with Florentine mosaics by José Ramalho in 1695. On the wall are three religious
azulejos dating from 1741, depicting scenes from the life of St. John the Baptist. The refectory and the
claustro are decorated with exquisite
azulejos, some dating from Moorish times, others from the 16th to the 18th centuries. One enters the
chapter house through a Manueline portal from the
quadra of St. John the Evangelist. The ribbed vault of this square room was
distempered during the renovations of 1727. The walls are covered with Arab-Hispanic azulejos with geometric and vegetal designs that are among the most important ceramic decorations in Portugal. Above the azulejos are some semicircular distempered paintings with religious themes:
St. John the Baptist,
St. John the Evangelist,
St. Christopher,
St. Clare and
St. Francis of Assisi. The museum houses also an important collection of Flemish, Spanish and Portuguese paintings from the 15th to the 18th centuries, among them: • Flemish paintings:
Virgin with Milk; Flemish School (c. 1530) and "Christ and His Apostles" (16th century) • Portuguese paintings:
Ecce Homo (15th century), "
St. Vincent by Vicente Gil and Manuel Vicente (16th century), "Virgin with the Rose" by Francisco Campos (16th century), "Mass of St. Gregory" probably by
Gregório Lopes (16th century), "Annunciation" (16th century) and four paintings by António Nogueira (16th century), "Last Supper" by Pedro Alexandrino (17th century). • Spanish paintings:
St. Augustine,
St. Jerome and "Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew" by
José de Ribera (Spanish, 17th century),
Head of Saint John the Baptist (Spanish School, 17th century) The museum houses also the funeral monuments in late-Gothic style of the first abbess D. Uganda and of the
Infante Fernando, Duke of Viseu and his wife Beatriz of Portugal. The archaeological collection of Fernando Nunes Ribeiro, donated to museum in 1987 after forty years of archaeological research, is on display on the upper floors: Visigothic and Roman artefacts, gravestones from the
Bronze Age with antique writings of the
Iberians and
steles from the
Iron Age. Among the several other artefacts in its collection, the museum possesses the
Escudela de Pero de Faria, a unique piece of Chinese porcelain from 1541. ==Museums and monuments==