Evora: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Évora is a whole walled town in the middle of the Alentejo plain, layered from a Roman temple to a medieval cathedral to the palaces of the kings who lived here in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is a world heritage site, and small enough to cross in twenty minutes. Two hours; in summer go early, the plain is very hot.
A short history of Evora
In the centre of Évora stands a Roman temple of the 1st century AD, one of the best preserved on the Iberian Peninsula. After centuries of Muslim rule, the city was captured in 1165 by Geraldo 'the Fearless'. In the 15th century the kings of Portugal often stayed here, and in 1559 the Jesuits founded a university here. In the 16th century the 'Chapel of Bones' was built in the Church of St Francis, its walls covered with the bones of about 5,000 monks. In 1986 the historic centre was declared a World Heritage Site.
The ten best sights in Evora
-
1Praça do Giraldo
The main square, arcades and a marble fountain
2Roman TempleFourteen Corinthian columns on the hilltop; free, always open
-
3Sé de Évora
Walk on the roof among the towers
4Museu de ÉvoraRoman stones and Flemish paintings in the bishop’s palace
5Convento dos LóiosA convent turned hotel, its church lined with tiles
-
6Palácio Cadaval
A ducal palace on the old wall, with art and a church
7Capela dos OssosA chapel lined with the bones of about five thousand people
8Igreja de São FranciscoThe great Gothic church of the bone chapel
9Rua dos MercadoresThe street of the old Jewish quarter
-
10Jardim Público
The ruins of King Manuel’s palace and peacocks
Scan with your phone camera to open the map there
What is an audio walk?
Tours in Evora →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Evora:
Free walking tours in Evora
The town on the hill
Évora is a whole walled town in the middle of the Alentejo plain, layered from a Roman temple to a medieval cathedral to the palaces of the kings who lived here in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is a world heritage site, and small enough to cross in twenty minutes. Two hours; in summer go early, the plain is very hot.
- Praça do Giraldo · The square is named for Geraldo the Fearless, a knight who took Évora from the Moors in 1165 by climbing the walls at night. It was also where the Inquisition, which had one of its three Portuguese courts in Évora, held its autos-da-fé, the public sentencing of those accused of secretly keeping their Jewish faith.
- Rua dos Mercadores · This street and the lanes around it were the judiaria, the Jewish quarter of one of the largest communities in Portugal, with its synagogue and its own gate. In 1497 King Manuel, who often held court in Évora, ordered the Jews of Portugal baptised by force, and the quarter became a street of New Christians watched by the Inquisition.
- Roman Temple · Fourteen granite columns with marble capitals from a temple of the first century, the best-preserved Roman building in Portugal. It survived because in the Middle Ages it was walled up and used as a fortress tower and later as the town slaughterhouse, until the walls were removed in the nineteenth century.
- Sé de Évora · The largest medieval cathedral in Portugal, a granite fortress-church begun in the twelfth century. Visitors climb onto its roof and walk between the towers over the town. Tradition says that the banners of Vasco da Gama’s fleet were blessed here before the voyage to India in 1497.
- Jardim Público · The public garden holds the remains of the royal palace of King Manuel, a small gallery with Moorish-style windows. Vasco da Gama is said to have received the command of the fleet to India here; he later lived in Évora, in a house on the street now named for him.
- Capela dos Ossos · In the sixteenth century the Franciscans of Évora, short of space in the town’s many cemeteries, lined a chapel with the bones of about five thousand people, skulls set in rows into the walls and pillars. Above the door the inscription reads: We bones that are here are waiting for yours.
The stones before history
The plain west of Évora, among cork oaks and grazing pigs, holds one of the densest groups of megalithic monuments in Europe: stone circles, menhirs and great burial chambers built by the first farmers thousands of years before the Romans, and a cave painted in the ice age. Half a day and a car; dirt roads at the end.
- Aqueduto da Água de Prata · The aqueduct of Silver Water was built in the 1530s by Francisco de Arruda, the architect of the Belém tower in Lisbon, to bring water about eighteen kilometres into the town. Inside the walls the arches come down to street level, and people built houses and shops into them that are still lived in.
- Menir dos Almendres · A single standing stone about four metres high, alone among cork oaks. It is aligned with the stone circle nearby, and from the circle the sun rises over it at the summer solstice.
- Cromeleque dos Almendres · Nearly a hundred standing stones on a slope facing the sunrise, the largest megalithic circle in the Iberian Peninsula. It was begun around six thousand BC and added to over thousands of years — the first stones are older than Stonehenge — and a few carry carved circles and crooks.
- Anta Grande do Zambujeiro · A burial chamber of standing stones up to about six metres high, roofed with a huge capstone, among the largest dolmens in Europe. It was once covered by an earth mound, and the finds from inside are in the museum in Évora.
- Gruta do Escoural · In 1963 a quarry blast broke into a cave, and inside were engravings and paintings of horses and wild cattle from the ice age, about twenty thousand years old — the only known painted ice-age cave in Portugal. It is visited in small groups by booking.
- Castelo de Montemor-o-Novo · A ruined castle on a hill over the plain, where in 1495 King Manuel and his council are said to have decided to send the expedition to India. The town below was the birthplace of Saint John of God, who founded the order of hospital brothers.
The marble towns and the lake
East of Évora the Alentejo is a land of hilltop castles, marble quarries and wine estates, ending at the great lake of Alqueva on the Spanish border. A full day and a car; finish at Monsaraz for the sunset and the stars.
- Arraiolos · A white village under one of the very few round castles in Portugal, famous since the seventeenth century for its carpets: wool embroidered by hand in cross-stitch on linen, in patterns that began as copies of Persian rugs. They are still made in the village workshops.
- Évoramonte · A castle keep on a peak, its towers carved with great stone ropes tied in knots, the symbol of the house of Bragança. In a house in the village below, in 1834, the treaty was signed that ended Portugal’s civil war between the liberals and the absolutist king Miguel.
- Paço Ducal de Vila Viçosa · The palace of the dukes of Bragança, who became the kings of Portugal, with a façade of local marble — the town is built on marble, and even the pavements are of it. On the first of February 1908 King Carlos left this palace for Lisbon, and was shot dead with his heir on arrival.
- Herdade do Esporão · One of the large wine estates of the Alentejo, with a medieval tower on the property. The region was poor grain land until the end of the twentieth century; now it makes some of the best-known wines in Portugal, some still fermented in huge clay amphorae as the Romans did.
- Monsaraz · A walled village of two streets of white houses on a hilltop, with a castle at one end and the plain of Spain across the river. Its sky is protected: the area around the lake was the first in the world certified as a Starlight Tourism Destination, in 2011.
- Alqueva · The dam on the Guadiana, finished in 2002, made the largest artificial lake in Western Europe, with an irregular shoreline over a thousand kilometres long. The old village of Luz was drowned and rebuilt as a copy on higher ground, its church and cemetery moved stone by stone.
Getting to Evora and getting around
- Évora Station · About ninety minutes from Lisbon; a short walk to the walls
Cheap eats in Evora
The Alentejo is the bread basket of Portugal, and its cooking is made of bread, olive oil, coriander and pork. Açorda is a soup of bread soaked in garlic, coriander and oil with a poached egg on top; migas are fried bread crumbs with pork; the black pig is fed on acorns under the cork oaks. The sheep’s cheeses of Évora and Serpa are strong and creamy. A plate of cheese and cured ham with a glass of red costs a few euro at the counter.
- Mercado Municipal · Cheese, black-pig ham and Alentejo bread
- Praça do Giraldo · Coffee and sericaia, the cinnamon egg pudding, under the arcades
- Rua dos Mercadores · Wine bars of the old town with petiscos
- Herdade do Esporão · Wine and olive oil tasted at the estate
- Monsaraz · Açorda and lamb in the walled village
- Paço Ducal de Vila Viçosa · Convent sweets of egg yolk and almond
Museums in Evora
Évora was a royal city, a university town and a seat of the Inquisition, and its museums keep all three — Roman stones, the art of the kings, and the memory of the town’s Jews.
- Museu de Évora · Roman finds and a Flemish altarpiece of the cathedral
- Universidade de Évora · Tiled classrooms; closed for two centuries
- Palácio Cadaval · A ducal palace with its family collection
- Paço Ducal de Vila Viçosa · The rooms of the last kings
- Gruta do Escoural · Ice-age art, by booking
Nature and day trips near Evora
The Alentejo is the montado: open pasture under scattered cork and holm oaks, where black pigs feed on acorns and the cork is stripped from the trees by hand every nine years. It is hot and golden in summer, green and full of flowers in spring.
- Menir dos Almendres · Cork oaks with the year painted on them
- Alqueva · A beach and boats on the great lake
- Monsaraz · The plain and the lake from the walls
- Aqueduto da Água de Prata · A path along the aqueduct into the country
- Évoramonte · The whole plain from the keep
Things to do in Evora with kids
For children Évora has a chapel of skulls, a cathedral roof to walk on, stones older than the pyramids, and a lake to swim in.
- Capela dos Ossos · A chapel of bones — for older children
- Sé de Évora · Walk on the roof
- Cromeleque dos Almendres · Run among the standing stones
- Jardim Público · Peacocks and a playground
- Alqueva · The lake beach below Monsaraz
- Monsaraz · A castle with a bullring inside
Holy places in Evora
Évora was a city of convents, more than twenty of them, and of a large Jewish community forced to convert in 1497 and then hunted by the Inquisition, which held court here for almost three centuries.
- Rua dos Mercadores · The old Jewish quarter
- Sé de Évora · The fortress cathedral
- Convento dos Lóios · A tiled convent church
- Igreja de São Francisco · The Gothic church of the bone chapel
- Praça do Giraldo · The square of the autos-da-fé
Nightlife in Evora
Évora is a student town with a quiet night: wine bars in the old lanes, the square after dark, and the stars over the Alqueva lake, one of the darkest skies in Europe.
- Rua dos Mercadores · Wine bars in the old town
- Praça do Giraldo · The square at night
- Roman Temple · The columns lit up after dark
- Alqueva · Stargazing under a protected sky
Frequently asked questions about Evora
What is there to see in Evora?
The top sights in Evora are Praça do Giraldo, Roman Temple and Sé de Évora. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Evora?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Evora without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Evora?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Evora, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The town on the hill.
How do you get to Evora and get around?
The main ways are Évora Station. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Evora, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Evora that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Evora for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.