Voz Operário: São Vicente de Fora

The name São Vicente de Fora, means Saint Vincent on the Outside, which refers to the fact that the original church, from 1147, was built outside the city walls. The site resulted from a vow that Portugal’s first king made, to build churches where Portuguese and northern European crusaders lay buried.

Monastery of São Vicente de Fora is dedicated to St. Vincent from 1582, and has the world’s most extensive collection of baroque tiles in its richly-decorated cloisters. It includes a series of 38 panels illustrating the fables of La Fontaine, created by master Policarpo de Oliveira Bernardes between 1740 and 1750. Other panels depict scenes from the history of Portugal, including the siege of Lisbon in 1147.

There’s also an ancient cistern and the pantheon of the Bragança dynasty, which includes the marble tomb of Catherine of Bragança, the Portuguese princess who became the queen of England when she married King Charles II in 1662. The borough of Queens, in New York, was named in her honor. 

The main tomb, however, is that of Carlos I, the next-to-last king of Portugal, who was assassinated shortly before the country became a republic.

The monastery and its Italian mannerist style dates from the 1582 reconstruction by Spanish architect Juan Herrera, who designed the Escorial outside Madrid. It was only inaugurated in 1629, and later served as a model for Portuguese religious architecture, inspiring churches in the empire, from Brazil to Macau.

It originally had a dome, but it collapsed on a crowd of worshippers in the 1755 earthquake. While the dome was never rebuilt, visitors can still get up close to the towers, by climbing to the rooftop, from where there’s a wonderful view of Alfama, the river and the National Pantheon.