Evora The sunset blends the Middle Ages into light and shadow
Many know about Portugal, but few have heard of "Evora"—this small Portuguese town, wholly included in the "World Heritage" list, is a delightful surprise highly recommended by Trip.com specialists on this customized Spain-Portugal tour. It is like an ancient coin carefully polished by time, engraved with two thousand years of history, yet glowing warmly under the sunset.
Evora lies quietly on the gentle slopes of the Alentejo plain, with 49,000 residents guarding 14th-century city walls that perfectly preserve the texture of the Middle Ages.
Guide Liu, seeing my love for photography, gave up the highway and leisurely drove along the country road.
The red-tiled white houses and castle of "New Montemor" we passed made a charming scene, inviting lingering❸❻⓫⓬⓭⓮⓯⓰⓱⓲⓳⓴; while the "Almendres Cromlech"❿, over seven thousand years old, paired with the women worshipping under olive trees, sketches a silhouette older than England’s Stonehenge.
Seeing another patch of red clay tile roofs spreading along the slope, the warm plain breeze rushing through the car window, the driver stopped the car at the foot of the city wall: "You have to wait for the sun to tilt to enter Evora’s gates."
At that moment, the sunset was like molten copper, dyeing the sky a rich blue, the dry grass in the wall’s brick gaps gilded with golden light, and the air carried the warm scent of sun-baked stones. Stepping on the edge of light and shadow into the city, I suddenly entered Giraldo Square❶❷❹—the 13th-century stone pavement was heated by the sun, but the cathedral arcade’s shadow was cool as well water, and the old men’s figures on the benches stretched long. Looking up, the yellow-and-white old buildings were covered with bougainvillea, the sunset flowing along the carved eaves, staining the walls with half-light, half-dark hues, like an ancient painting not yet dry.
Circling half the square, the fourteen granite columns of the Roman Temple of Diana suddenly came into view❷. These giant stones from the 1st century AD have endured over two thousand years, their column patterns carved as if by axe and chisel, while moss in the stone cracks glowed warmly. Sunset light leaked through the columns, weaving a flickering grid on the ground; the cold, hard stone became warm and gentle at this moment, and the wind passing over the column tops sounded like the low moan of ancient Romans passed down through millennia.
Walking deeper into the old town, the road narrowed into alleys. Pale lime walls and layers of red roofs, a beam of light slanted through the alley entrance, and the poet on the oldest bookstore’s door wall appeared fleeting in the light and shadow⓮. Turning past an archway, the church spire appeared behind ivy-covered walls, the wind moved the bronze bell, its sound rolling with light and shadow, startling the pigeons on the ancient water trough wall⓬. Their shadows fluttered past shoulders, landed on windowsills, breaking the shimmering sunset in the glass.
Manueline stone columns cast long, slender shadows, weaving rings around the pool. The shadows overlapped on 15th-century patterned tiles, where vines and carvings have intertwined for nearly five hundred years. Touching the column felt as cold as ice, but the carved folds held lingering sunset light, warm enough to burn.
By the city center park, the entire ancient town was bathed in an orange glow, and I saw the silhouette of a peacock framed by a serrated archway⓴. Suddenly, it felt like only at this moment do the stones soften, time tastes sweet, and Evora is a time-forged ring, each groove engraved with the weight of years: two-thousand-year-old columns, five-hundred-year-old cloisters, three-hundred-year-old tiles, all untouched by time’s erosion, instead softened warmly by the sunset.
This ancient town, home to nine churches, is most famous for the "Chapel of Bones" decorated with the bones of 5,000 monks⓳(above), with a chilling inscription at the door: "Our bones lie here, waiting for your bones to come." Eastern and Western views on death differ greatly; this was not included in the itinerary, and I kept my distance from that heaviness.
The world calls Evora a "city in a museum." I feel it is more an epic carved by sunset light and shadow, where those stones, old walls, and spires are words in a poem. It is no longer a cold exhibit in a museum but an ancient coin warmed by sunset, its imprint clear and within reach.