In Portugal: Why Travelling To A Chapel Made Of Human Bones Made Perfect Sense For A Birthday Trip

NDTV

20-05-2025

Portugal:
Visiting a chapel made of human bones is not your usual birthday trip. No one wants to be reminded of mortality on the day they celebrate being born, but well, death is the only truth, like it or not. So, as I looked for day trips from Lisbon on my birthday last year, a little town glowed on the app. "The Town With The Human-Bone Chapel". Capela dos Ossos.
And just like that, all other day trips were thrown out of the window, and I settled for Evora, a little reminder of life and death in central Portugal.
The entry to the Chapel of Bones is chilling. The message on the entrance arch, even more.
"We the bones that are here, for yours we wait."
Neat. Grim. And just so true.
The message of "dust to dust" echoes in every bone that holds up the Chapel of Bones. The chapel was built in the first half of the 17th century and is the oldest Chapel of Bones in Portugal. It was dedicated to the cult of the Souls of Purgatory (the cult of the dead or the cult of the abandoned, developed in Italy's Naples when the Plague killed more than half of the city's population). The bones of the burials connected to its convent were used to build the chapel. The skulls and bones of over 5,000 monks were turned into its walls.
Capela dos Ossos lies within the Church of San Francisco at the southern edge of the town. For most day trips from Lisbon, this isn't the first stop. It is revealed to you after a fashion.
The walk through Evora starts at its entrance, through its gardens and museum. First comes the Church of St Francis. It's only once you have ooh-ed and aah-ed at the interiors of this catholic place of worship that you are taken to the next stop: Capela dos Ossos. The Chapel of Bones, built by Franciscan friars, was inaugurated in 1816.
Sunlight filters in through three windows in the bone-walls into a chamber that is otherwise quite dark. If you look up, you see a ceiling made of bricks painted white, with death motifs all over it. Yet another morbid message is scribbled on the roof: "Melior est dies mortis die nativitatis (Better is the day of death than the day of birth)". Is it? Maybe.
Capela dos Ossos forces you into reflection. The chapel is a place of sober contemplation on the human facts of life and death, and that no one really escapes the latter, no matter who you are.
So, "we the bones that are here, for yours we wait".
Outside of Capela dos Ossos, the town diffuses into a tangle of white and yellow alleyways and lanes where you can pick up everything from an ice cream cone to fake Birkenstocks. Cork-soled sandals are everywhere. The city is among the world's largest exporters of cork. And pork. The best ham and pork products in Portugal come from this little town. The pigs, that feed on cork-oak acorns, later go on to serve as gastronomical delights around tables in Portugal.
Evora is also home to some brilliant, unfussy food and wine. Robust reds and light whites that go very well with Portuguese food.
At lunchtime, the entire city slows down to a stop. There's no one on the streets. The souvenir shops are shuttered shut. The bars and taverns have their shades drawn. The city holds you by the shoulders and sits you down for a leisurely lunch. Who was I to stray from the ways of Evora.
So, a little Google search took me to Bistro Barao, a Tripadvisor-recommended legend, a door in a narrow lane that you can pass by without a second look. Bistro Barao seats 14 people at once. The room that the entrance leads to is a low-ceilinged, literal hole in the wall. It leads to another of the same, with three more tables inside. The restaurant is run by Manuel and Margarite. Margarite ruffles up the delicacies that her husband Manuel then takes to his guests. A team like no other.
I chose a table by a wall that had scribbles from guests world over who Manuel, the one-man serving army at Bistro Barao, has served. He spoke very little English. I spoke zero Portuguese. But Google Translate bowed to Manuel's instincts as he brought me some of the best fish curry I have ever had... outside of Bengal, that is. He also picked a white to go with the fish. It was divine.
An equally divine high accompanied me as I traipsed out of the restaurant, feeling full and fulfilled, out in a town where time seemed to have lost all meaning. Life is laidback in Evora.
All of Evora's alleys eventually lead to Praça do Giraldo, the town square. A fountain lies at the centre of the square. The Henriquina Fountain's eight jets symbolise the eight streets that radiate from Praca do Giraldo. The municipality buildings and Evora's major banks are all around this square. There are many little keepsake stores around, in case you wanted to pick a bit of Evora to take home.
From the city's well-preserved old town centre, you can still see the medieval walls that partially surround it. There are many monuments scattered all over town that date back to various historical periods, starting 2,000 years ago. Romans took over the town in 57 BC and turned it into a walled city. Then came the Moors, under Tariq ibn-Ziyad. After 400 years of Islamic rule, Gerald the Fearless snatched Evora from the Moors in 1165 AD, and Portuguese king Alfonso I got the town under his rule the following year.
The Roman Temple from around the 1st century BC is still around. It began being called the Temple of Diana long after; as recently as the 17th century.
All around Evora lie the dust of civilisations past. The stories of its many conquerors. The many men and women who built and are buried in Evora. The monks whose bones were dug up. The skulls that still wait for the ones who haven't yet made it there. Inside that bone-chilling bone chapel.