How to Hang with Monks in Portugal

Sometimes really interesting information is obscured by a ridiculous headline. I’m not just making a joke about this story’s title, but about the email that prompted it, sent from the Portuguese tourism board. Subject line: Cool Monasteries explore and even you can sleep in.

The same line is repeated at least four times in the email itself. But you know what? After chuckling to myself and repeating “even you can sleep in” in a Portuguese accent a few times, I read through this list of monasteries and it really did seem cool. Maybe the Portuguese tourism folks are brilliant marketing geniuses who got me right where they wanted me.

Here’s their list; I’ve kept it the way it was written apart from any major mistakes, because who am I to tamper with jokes about Visigoths or monastic architecture?

Santa Cruz Monastery is set in the heart of downtown Coimbra, Portugal, but back in 1131 it was built outside the walls of Coimbra by the Order of St. Augustine as a school for intellectual and noble elites. The building is a mish mash of designs: There are elements of the original Romanesque church, which was redone in gothic, Manueline, Mannerist and even Baroque. It is a lesson in Portuguese architecture as well as history, as two of Portugal’s kings were buried there. It is, in all its glory, one of the most impressive, historic, and inspiring monuments in Portugal.
Flor da Rosa Monastery, Crato (pictured) He stood outnumbered by a massive Spanish army, the last hope for his nation – embodying an ancient line of kings, and the hopes of a million Portuguese. That was António, prior of Crato, in the 16th century. Two centuries earlier, Álvaro Gonçalves Pereira, of the Order of St. John of Hospital, supervised the building of the Flor da Rosa Monastery in Crato

Amy Westervelt is a freelance journalist based in Oakland, Calif. She writes about tech, health, and the environment for a variety of publications, including the Wall Street Journal and Forbes. In 200 ...read more

Comments