A not-so-good weather day, but we stay 'local', doing a deep dive on Guimarães (pop 152,309 in 2011). First, we spend a few minutes checking on Siri, after yesterday afternoon's fiasco. We tag a public parking lot just a few minutes from the Pousada, and Siri has no trouble finding it, planning a route, and displaying the instruction on the car's screen. It just works.
Our itinerary does not include the Igreja de Nossa Senhora da Consolação e Santos Passos (eighteenth century). Saramago's review is so 'one-star' negative, we had dismissed it:
There stands a church, whose name the traveller prefers to remain unremembered, for its assault on good taste is fundamental and extends to insulting what a religion has the right to expect: meaning an atmosphere blessed with excellence, an oratory dedicated to aunt Patrocínio or mother Paula, a transgression of the confessional. The traveller enters contented and emerges in anguish. He had viewed the “Santas Mães” in the museum, and the Virgin garlanded with roses who’s also there—but neither she nor the pair of them deserve such an offence and such a let-down. There remained much still to be seen in Guimarães, but the traveller preferred to depart. (José Saramago, “Journey to Portugal,” 1990; trans Hopkinson-Caistor, 2000)
But once we reach the Jardim do Largo República do Brasil, with the church at the south end, we decide to have a quick look. How bad could it be?
The church faces northwest onto the Jardim, so the front facade is in almost constant shadow. Admittedly, the composition is a collection of pieces: a convex tiled surface with a series of loose elements. The upper cornice does attempt to bring it together, but all the complicated shapes don't really tell a story, as if the masons chose from a catalog.
The Património Cultural site tells us this is the result of a series of projects. The igreja is by André Soares, the torres sineiras (nineteenth century) are by Pedro Ferreira. It does provide a focus for the Jardim. It looks nice at night.
The interior is surprisingly clean, with a matched set of chapels that feature paintings rather than figurines (but need conservation and cleaning). The colored glass panels, on the other hand, provide unexpected color and light. The illustrations look to be recent (nineteenth or twentieth century, 1990's?), and show the Via Crúcis (Stations of the Cross).
There are broad, concave pilasters in the rounded corners; the two in front include niches or chapels for the festival floats: Senhor dos Passos and Senhora da Soledade.
In a way, the interior is uncluttered and unremarkable. However, in a glass enclosure under a chapel near the door is a mummy. The label identifies him as "São Fortunato Mártir, Veneração pública nesta igreja, Desde 11 de Setembro de 1787".
Around town we know there are the Capelas dos Passos de Paixão de Cristo (eighteenth century); they appear to be tied to this church.
Let the traveller put on record that this is one of the most beautiful museums he knows. Others may have greater riches, more famous collections, ornaments of finer provenance: the Alberto Sampaio Museum has a perfect balance between what it contains and its architectural surroundings. Then there’s the cloister at the College of Our Lady of the Olive Tree whose sequestered air and irregular design leaves the traveller with no desire to depart, but rather to linger over examining its arches and capitals, its abundance of rustic and learned statues, all of them beautiful and all putting the traveller at grave risk of falling into temptation and not moving on from there. His salvation lies in the guide’s announcement of further beauties within its halls, which he discovered, in such numbers it would take a book to describe them all … a thousand other wonders in painting, sculpture, ceramics and silverware. The traveller’s final conviction is that the Alberto Sampaio Museum contains among the loveliest of collections of sacred objects on display in Portugal, less for the quantity than for the exceptional aesthetic quality of the vast majority of the pieces, many of them truly first-class. This museum merits any number of visits, and this particular visitor swears to return every time he passes through Guimarães. He might not revisit the castle or the dukes’ palace although he promised to do so: this, however, is a museum he won’t miss out on. (José Saramago, “Journey to Portugal,” 1990; trans Hopkinson-Caistor, 2000)
The Claustro is not square to the adjoining Igreja, so the resulting courtyards are narrow and disconnected. On one side of the Claustro is a stone room with Gothic vaults, the Capela de São Brás (fifteenth century). At the other end is the the Sala do Capítulo (thirteenth century), including its janelas geminadas (double-arched windows), iron grilles with animal heads, and incredible paneled ceiling finished in pinturas de brutesco (tempera, eighteenth century). We note São Pedro's papal hat and keys in the center, and the human figures with 'leafy legs'.
Remnant stone blocks and are shown in the arcade, as well as carved stone epitaphs, such as the one for Canon Afonso André (fifteenth century).
In the corner is the Sala de Santa Clara, which houses religious artwork from the Antigo Convento de Santa Clara (now the Câmara Municipal). Bright, colorful paintings of Bíblia Imagined (Bible verses) fill the entry room, enjoyable, fantastical imagery.The Ilhargas da capela-mor (side panels from the altar, eighteenth century) are in the larger adjoining space, and includes the Annunciation, along with other pieces from the altar space.
Upstairs, we are greeted by the Tríptico da Natividade (fourteenth or fifteenth century) is a late Gothic masterpiece made of gilded silver and enamel. The Nativity scene occupies the lower half of the central panel. An intricate Gothic screen hangs above, and angels carry the Portuguese royal shields. Just above the Virgin's bed, the heads of manger animals poke through the diamond-gridded background.
In each side panel are stacked pairs of trefoil aediculae: in the upper left is the Annunciation (the Angel Gabriel and the Virgin with a vase of lilies), lower left is the Presentation of the Child in the Temple, upper right is the Annunciation to the Shepherds ("for behold, I bring unto you good tidings of great joy"), and lower right is the Adoration of the Magi.
The outer panels are 'closed' on the back of the display and reprise the the Annunciation to the Shepherds ("Gloria in ex celsis Deo", sixteenth century).
Other large stone carvings follow. The Consecration inscription for the Igreja de Nossa Senhora da Oliveira is dated January 23rd, 1401, and the inscribed Foundation block from the same church is dated May 6th, 1387. And finally, a strangely elongated carving of Jessé (from the western facade, Igreja de Nossa Senhora da Oliveira, fourteenth or fifteenth century), which would have been placed as the 'root' of the Tree of Jesse (father of King David); Isaiah 11:1-2 is inscribed there.
The next room holds large frescoes and a collection of absorbing statuettes, preserving more fragments of lost churches. We are becoming more and more familiar with many of the saints, and can begin to identify them by their accessories: São Tomé (patron of architects, sixteenth century), São Bartolomeu (with blade and chained demon, sixteenth century), São Paulo (seventeenth century), São Tomé (seventeenth century), and São Gonçalo (with cane, fifteenth century), São Brás (with boy, sixteenth century), and São Lorenço (with gridiron, fifteenth century)
Next next is a mysterious, alabaster Nossa Senhora da Piedade (pieta), with a hooded Virgin. She is flanked by two wood carvings: Nossa Senhora e São João Evangelista, and Santas Mulheres (all sixteenth century). The grouping is compelling for the angular, shrunken, Christ; the curvilinear, cloaked Virgin; and the distressed, expressive mourners.
The cheery figure of Virgem do Leite is adorable; and nearby, the Calvário (both fifteenth century) seems to be a museum favorite for the expressive faces.
The frescoes are more fragmentary; we imagine the effort required to remove and remount. But the surface quality and the luminous color are undeniable. The Desposição de Cristo no Túmulo (Ponte da Barca, Igreja de São Salvador de Bravães, sixteenth century) is an excellent example. We ask the docent about the location of Bravães, and he tells us it's near Chaves, in the Trás-o-Montes. But he returns in a minute to correct himself: it's north of Braga, in the Minho (good to know).
Both the Batismo de Cristo (Chaves, Igreja de Nossa Senhora da Azinheira) and the Degolação de São João Batista (Guimarães, sala do capítulo do Convento de São Francisco, both sixteenth century) show the development of perspective drawing during this era. Fascinatingly, the Degolação shows two gruesome, narrative scenes in one space.
The tour ends with the impressive Tríptico da Lamentação (sixteenth century). The Lamentação de Cristo fills the center, with more than a dozen mourners, an amazing cityscape of Jerusalem in the background, and more victims on the hill at Calvary. On the left wing is São Brás (choking boy at his feet), and on the right is São Jerónimo (with galero and borlas).
On the 'backs' of the wings are the Anjo da Anunciação (Gabriel) and the Virgem da Anunciação. So, when the doors are closed, we see the beginning of the story, and then they are open, the end.
By the way, Saramago's "book to describe them all" does, in fact, exist. The Museu sells a complete catalog with beautiful color photos for fifteen euros, and most of the collection is also online. As promised the Museu is a triumph: well-presented art, beautiful facility, marvelous stories, and friendly staff. It absolutely deserves 'five stars'.
Igreja de Nossa Senhora da Oliveira (tenth to fifteenth centuries) is the church of the Real Colegiada, which, sounds like an old royal-academic-religious institution (it is not). The exterior shows work from the Romanesque, Gothic, and Manueline eras. The blocked-up 'window' over the main portal is a curiosity.
The church pamphlet tells us that the Árvore de Jessé (the Jessé from the Museu) would have been in this opening, and that the two lower, outer figures in the archivolts are Gabriel and the the Virgin (an Annunciation). The inner figures are São Pedro and São Paulo.
Though built in various ages, the interior feels remarkably coherent: two aisles and a nave, separated by arcades of pointed arches and taller arches at the crossing (just by the chancel). The ceiling consists of sloped timbers over the aisles, and a pitched roof over the nave.
Just to the left (under the torre sineira) is an iron fence encircling a tomb, the Capela tumular dos Pinheiros (Dr Pêro Esteves and Isabel Pinheiro; he was Judge and Ombudsman of the Duke of Bragança; their son, Dom Diogo Pinheiro, was prior here, 1503-1514; the 'cloaked' pietá at the Museu is from this chapel).
The capela-mor is decorated with colorful flags, flowers, and fabrics, and shows the coronation of Nossa Senhora da Oliveira (eighteenth century). Looking back, we can see another reason that portal window may be blocked – a super-sized pipe organ fills the coro-alto.
We pay the young lady at the desk an extra euro each and receive tickets to the sacristia and the coro-alto.
The sacristía is well-lit and full of local crafts, such as the banner embroidered with olives; interestingly, Nossa Senhora has a rather dark complexion. Two carvings mark the passage up the stairway: 'Ex-voto: Cristo' and 'Ex-voto: Nossa Senhora da Oliveira' (by Óscar Machado, local music teacher, twentieth century) – both a bit scary.
Then we get a close look at the 'Órgão de tubes neoclássico' (by Luís António de Carvalho Guimarães, nineteenth century), in pristine condition. The trumpets splayed on the curve are fantastic, plus the swags, and the moldings. The entire Colegiada must shake when the operator hits the low notes.
Back outside, and we collect our thoughts; the Igreja and the Museu are a lot to process. We now recognize the grilled window is in front of the Capela tumular dos Pinheiros. We think at first its purpose is to protect the Manueline surround, but now we think it's to secure the túmulo.
Around the corner is an odd, locked, green, metal box, with the the names of religious order on the door, and a smoke pipe (?) out the top. Google searches turns up nothing. We don't know what that is and begin to notice there's a similar box on the other local churches. Is this related to the dissolution of the orders in 1834? is it for food donations?
We walk up the hill to the Castelo passing: the Antiga Câmara Municipal, the Solar do Arco, and the Antigo Convento de Santa Clara. The facade of the Convento demands further consideration: if the center block is 'correct', then the south (right-hand) wing is squished, and the north wing is extra-squished (and squeezed out the top). It's an unusual composition and a unique expression of symmetry.
This short walk shows that Guimarães is unbelievably clean and tidy, with truly excellent wire management (why can't we have this in Lisboa?). We pass two more Capelas dos Passos. In just a few minutes we are in the Jardim do Carmo. There is another green box just below the bells.
Near the top of the hill, the streets spread out and are lined with cypress trees. It's splendid here. We find the statue of Dom Afonso Henriques, who we learned so much about in Castro Verde. He seems a stout fellow. In other images seen during research, his sword is missing; it's been replaced. Best not to mess with him.
To our right is the Paço dos Duques de Bragança (fifteenth century, restored twentieth century):
The traveller departed, bidding farewell to Afonso Henriques, who was wiping down the sweat of the day’s hard labours from his horse, went down to the church of St Miguel do Castelo, which he found closed, then on to the heavily over-restored Palace of the Dukes of Braganza. The impression it offered the traveller was to have committed to architecture the same taste for mediaevalisation that our official and officious sculptors adopted from the forties through to the sixties. The artistic wealth of the palace is not in question, still less the Gallic aspect of its construction, there in the original, but it had had a fresh coat of paint, equally distributed across the ancient and merely archaic additions, despite its Gobelins and Pastrana tapestries, the armoury hall, or the collection of furniture and sacred paintings. Perhaps the traveller still bore the castle’s boulder upon his shoulders. Something rendered him unable to take in the palace. He made a pledge to return there one day, to repair the present injustices which, through his own fault, he was committing. (José Saramago, “Journey to Portugal,” 1990; trans Hopkinson-Caistor, 2000)
The ground level contains two massive rooms: the Salão dos Passos Perdidos (hall of lost steps) and the Salão de Banquetes (banqueting hall). Both rooms have enormous Tapeçaria de Pastrana; the Salão dos Passos Perdidos has two (the fourth of the set is upstairs). The Salão de Banquetes also features an eye-straining, chestnut timber roof structure, seemingly made by caravela shipbuilders.
On the first floor we find the Capela dressed in more chestnut and stained glass. At first we believe the twelve panes might be the Twelve Apostles, but a search tells us that it's a mixed crowd (top image, upper left to lower right): Santo António, Jesus Cristo, and São Francisco de Assis; São Jorge, Santa Maria de Guimarães, and São Tiago; Dom Afonso (first Duque de Bragança), Dom Afonso Henriques (first Rei de Portugal), and Dona Constança de Noronha (first Duquesa de Bragança); and Dona Filipa de Lencastre, Dom João I, and Dom Nuno Álvares Pereira.
The monumental Salão Nobre, as well as the Câmaras de Dormir. If Saramago is concerned that this is a work of historical fiction ("heavily over-restored"), he might choose to enjoy the fiction, especially the dizzying scale and quality of the ceiling in the Salão Nobre.
During the seventeenth century, the Paço falls into a state of deep ruin. Stones are removed for other construction projects, and areas suffer fires by the end of the nineteenth century. Restoration begins in the early twentieth century, with major restoration work being finished by 1960 (Intervenção Realizada).
We witness everything collected, recreated, and displayed: the breathtaking tapestries, porcelains, and furnishings. Then, we imagine the restoration work: the roof timbers, the preservation of the stone, the painted ceilings in the residential apartments. Maybe nothing is original, but everything is fabulous. Saramago might be disappointed with 'Consolação e Santos Passos', but the Paço is a literal treasure-house, and visually stunning.
Finally, we reach the Castelo de Guimarães (tenth to fifteenth centuries, restored twentieth century). A walk around the walls reminds us how Portuguese castelos are built within rocky outcrops on the tops of tall hills. The Castelo is irregularly shaped, compact, and crowded with tourists. It has plain walls and square towers.
Inside, the jagged, ruined joints, the tops of the large boulders, the undulating parapet, and the rhythm of the crenellations make for extremely enjoyable viewing.
Thus constructing this and further episodes of a revised history of his country, the traveller enters the castle. From outside it had looked considerably larger. Inside there is a tiny enclosure, made even smaller by the thickness of the walls along the main tower of tribute and the remains of the citadel. Within is a typical little Portuguese house, as can be found in any part of the world at any moment in time. The traveller examines his emotions for signs of affection and despairs at finding himself less moved than he would have wished. Among so many stones, which are the most charged with feeling? Many were laid here little more than forty years ago, others date back to the time of Dom Fernando, when the earth and wood was sent to arm the Countess Mumadona, leaving behind only this sodden dust which sticks to the traveller’s fingers when he shakes out his trouser turn-ups. The traveller would prefer the river of history to rashly invade his breast, instead of which a thin trickle of water continually secretes itself there, vanishing into the sands of oblivion.He is thus unsheltered between the false walls, almost sighing with frustration as, defeated, he looks at the floor and takes comfort in finding the explanation of it all so close at hand, although hitherto unseen by himself. He is standing on the same great stones that Afonso Henriques and his labourers walked upon—who knows whether if here someone was imprisoned or even died, perhaps a Martim or an Álvaro?—but the stone, the floor, the ceiling above, the squally wind, all carry every word ever spoken there in Portuguese, and with the first and final sighs arising from the depths of the profound river that is our people. The traveller has no need to mount the sentry’s walkway to view a bit more of the countryside, nor clamber to the top of the tower to see still more. Sitting on this stone, unworn by feet either shod or unshod, he understood everything, or assumed he did, at least for today. (José Saramago, “Journey to Portugal,” 1990; trans Hopkinson-Caistor, 2000)
Today, we find it difficult to sympathize with "the traveller". If the only place where he can find solace from this "revised history" is the top of Dom Afonso's boulder, then it was before the age of the selfie. We wait a good ten minutes for the couples to clear, as they smile and gesture into their phones.
The rest of the Castelo, the torre, the parapets, and the walkways are intriguing, though some of the interventions are heavy-handed (the railings, the bridge). Perhaps we see the Paço and the Castelo without expectations, or with fresh, foreign eyes. "The traveller" wishes for a "river of history", but we are unsure what's missing – seems like a firehose to us.
"False walls" may tell honest stories. Guimarães is a real gem.
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