Capela dos Ossos
Interesting facts
- The chapel was the initiative of three Franciscan friars and was built on the site of the friars' original dormitory.
- Its only daylight comes through three small openings along the left wall, leaving the bone-lined arcades in half-light.
- The vaults are whitewashed brick painted with allegorical images of death, contrasting with walls and columns made of skulls, femurs and vertebrae.
- The bones are set not only on the walls, columns and ceiling but in places on the outside of the chapel as well.
- The chapel was dedicated to an image of Christ carrying the cross, known in Évora as the Lord Jesus of the House of Bones.
- The sonnet that urges passers-by to pause is attributed to António da Ascenção Teles, parish priest of São Pedro from 1845 to 1848.
- A second poem in the chapel speaks of fleshless skulls as constant companions, and of how the talents and vanities of the dead may have weighed on their eternity.
Why it is worth it
"We bones that are here, for yours we wait" — the words carved over the entrance (in Portuguese, Nós ossos que aqui estamos pelos vossos esperamos) set the tone for the room beyond. The walls and eight pillars of the Chapel of Bones in Évora are lined with human skulls and bones, set in rows and patterns and bound with cement — the remains of about 5,000 people.
The chapel was created in the seventeenth century by Franciscan friars of the Convent of São Francisco. The friars had two reasons: the city's many monastic cemeteries were running out of space, and the friars wanted a place that would bring the brothers and the faithful face to face with mortality, in the spirit of the Counter-Reformation. Bones were brought from some forty-two cemeteries around Évora. The chapel has three naves and measures 18.7 by 11 metres. On the ceiling runs a line from Ecclesiastes — better is the day of death than the day of birth — and two desiccated bodies, one of an adult and one of a child, hang in glass cases. A poem attributed to a nineteenth-century parish priest invites the passer-by to stop and reflect on the end of life. The church and convent of São Francisco have been a National Monument since 1910.
Évora, the historic capital of the Alentejo, is a compact walled city whose historic centre was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986. Its best-known landmark is a Roman temple of the first century, standing a short walk from the Chapel of Bones among whitewashed streets, churches and palaces.
Getting there
The Capela dos Ossos is attached to the Church of São Francisco in the centre of Évora, in Portugal's Alentejo region, about 140 km from Lisbon. Évora is the terminus of the Linha de Évora railway, with trains to Lisbon. The nearest airport in a straight line is Badajoz (BJZ) in Spain, about 101 km away; the nearest in Portugal is Lisbon Humberto Delgado Airport (LIS), about 109 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Capela dos Ossos is a monument in Évora, Portugal. It is a small interior chapel located next to the entrance of the Church of St. Francis. The Chapel gets its name because the interior walls are covered and decorated with human skulls and bones.
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