Three days in Évora: the best eating in Portugal, and the town to yourself by evening
A walled town in the Alentejo small enough to cross in fifteen minutes, with five thousand years of building inside the walls and a megalithic site out in the cork oaks.
- Length
- 3 days, 2 nights
- Where you stay
- Évora
- Places
- 8 across 3 days
Évora is a small white town on a low hill in the middle of the Alentejo, still ringed by its medieval walls, and it has been continuously occupied for longer than almost anywhere else in Europe. The Celtici had a regional capital here. The Romans took it in 57 BC. The kings of Portugal held court in it, the Jesuits ran a university in it, and all of that is still standing within a fifteen minute walk of the main square.
That density is the appeal. There is no trudging between sights: the Roman temple, the cathedral, a 15th century convent and a ducal palace share one small square at the top of the hill, and everything else is a few minutes downhill from them.
The Alentejo around it is the other half of the trip. Flat, hot, empty, planted with cork oaks and olives, and scattered with megalithic monuments that predate every wall in the town by thousands of years.
Highlights
- A 1st century Roman temple that survived by being bricked up inside a later building
- The Capela dos Ossos, walled and roofed with the bones of the dead, and its greeting to the living
- Almendres Cromlech, a stone circle out among the cork oaks, older than Stonehenge
- Alentejo cooking: black pork, bread soups and heavy red wine, at prices that have not caught up with Lisbon
Where to stay
Évora, two nights
Two nights is the honest length. One full day covers the town without hurrying and the arrival afternoon covers the top of the hill, which leaves the second day free for the megaliths or a slower version of the first.
It also works as a stop between Lisbon and the Spanish border, or as a two night break from Lisbon on its own.
Day by day
Day 1 in Évora
The temple, the convent and the cathedral
Everything on the first afternoon sits within three hundred metres, which makes this the least demanding arrival day anywhere in Portugal. Walk up from the bus terminal, drop the bags, and start with the oldest thing standing.
The order below runs from Roman to Gothic in about three hundred metres, which is a fair summary of Évora.
- 15:30
Roman Temple of Évora
ReligiousFourteen granite columns with marble capitals, raised in the 1st century for the imperial cult and known locally, on no evidence at all, as the Temple of Diana. It survived because the middle ages walled it up inside another building and forgot about it, and it was only freed in the 1800s. Floodlit at night and free at all times.
- 16:30
Lóios Convent and Church
ReligiousAcross the square, a 15th century convent whose church interior is lined floor to ceiling with painted tiles. Look for the chapterhouse doorway, and for the glass panels in the church floor that open onto a Moorish cistern and an ossuary underneath.
- 17:30
Cathedral of Évora
ReligiousTwo minutes downhill, built between 1280 and 1340 out of granite and looking more like a castle than a cathedral, with two mismatched towers. The apostles on the main doorway date from around 1335. Pay the extra for the roof: you come out on the tiles above the nave with the whole Alentejo laid out flat around you.
- 20:00
Dinner in the old town
EatThe small taverns in the lanes below the cathedral do Alentejo cooking properly. Ask for the house red and the day's stew.
With more time: The Palace of the Dukes of Cadaval is on the same square as the temple, built out of the remains of a castle that burned in 1384, and its tower is one of the few interiors in town most visitors miss.
Day 2 in Évora
The bone chapel, then the standing stones
A morning in the lower town and an afternoon out in the country, which is the shape this day wants to take. The heat decides the timing in summer: do the church early and the stones late, when the light is long and low across the field.
The Capela dos Ossos is attached to the church of São Francisco and reached through it, so the two are one visit rather than two.
- 09:30
Saint Francis Church
ReligiousLate 15th century, Gothic outside with Manueline detail, and a single enormous vaulted nave with no columns in it at all, which was structurally ambitious and still looks it. The side chapels were decorated in Baroque later.
- 10:30
Capela dos Ossos
ReligiousThrough the church and down: a small chapel whose walls and pillars are faced with the bones of several thousand people, exhumed by Franciscan friars from graveyards that were filling the town. The inscription over the door reads, roughly, we bones that are here await yours. It is calmer inside than that suggests, and it was built to make you think rather than to frighten you.
- 12:30
Long lunch, then out of town
EatEat properly before going: there is nothing at all at the stones, not a kiosk, not a tap.
- 15:00
Almendres Cromlech
HistoricHalf an hour west, the last of it on a dirt track through cork oaks. Ninety-odd granite menhirs standing in two joined ovals on a slope, put up in stages from around 6000 BCE, which makes them older than Stonehenge and older than the pyramids. There is no ticket office and usually nobody there. Touch them; nobody minds.
With more time: The Great Dolmen of Zambujeiro is on the way back and is one of the largest burial chambers in Europe, seven upright stones under a shelter in a field. A taxi doing the Almendres run will usually add it for very little.
Day 3 in Évora
Water, walls and the way out
The last morning belongs to the aqueduct, which is the most enjoyable thing to walk in Évora and the one most people leave without seeing.
Buses and trains both go from below the walls, so a morning here still gets you back to Lisbon for a late lunch.
- 09:30
Prata Aqueduct
HistoricBuilt between 1531 and 1537 by Francisco de Arruda, the same architect as the Belém tower in Lisbon, to bring water nine kilometres into the town. Follow it in from the northwest and watch the arches shrink as the ground rises, until houses, shops and doorways are simply built into the spans. People still live in them.
- 11:00
Fountain of Portas de Moura
HistoricOn the way back through town, a Renaissance fountain from 1556 in a square of Moorish-arched houses, with a stone globe in the middle of the basin, a piece of quiet showing off from a country that had recently worked out the shape of the world.
- 11:45
Coffee in the Praça do Giraldo
EatThe arcaded main square, and the right place to sit for half an hour before the bus.
With more time: With a later departure, the Royal Palace at the edge of the gardens is said to be where Vasco da Gama was given command of his fleet in 1497, and the gardens themselves are the shadiest spot inside the walls.
Before you go
Getting there and away
From Lisbon the bus is usually the better answer. Rede Expressos runs frequently from Sete Rios and takes between an hour and twenty and two hours depending on the service, arriving at the terminal a short walk below the walls. Trains also run from Lisbon, less often, to a station about a kilometre south of the centre.
Driving makes sense only if you want the megalithic sites, which is a legitimate reason. The A6 motorway reaches Évora from Lisbon in about an hour and a half. Park outside the walls: the streets inside are narrow, one-way and largely for residents.
Getting around
On foot, entirely. The old town is roughly a kilometre across and everything in these three days except the stone circle is inside the walls. The hill is gentle by Portuguese standards.
For the megaliths you need a car, a taxi or a half day tour. The last few kilometres to Almendres are unsurfaced track through cork woods, passable in an ordinary car in dry weather and slow going after rain. Taxis in town will do the return trip with a wait; agree the price before setting off.
Where to stay
Inside the walls, and ideally in the upper half near the temple. The town is small enough that any address within the walls is walkable, and staying inside means having the streets to yourself in the evening once the day visitors from Lisbon have gone.
Évora fills up in spring and empties in August, when the Alentejo heat is serious and locals leave for the coast. A courtyard and thick walls matter more here than a view.
Eating and drinking
This is one of the best eating regions in Portugal and the least fussy about it. Look for porco preto, the black pig fattened on acorns in the cork woods; açorda and migas, two different ways of turning yesterday's bread into today's dinner with garlic, coriander and olive oil; and lamb stewed slowly with mint.
Alentejo reds are big, warm and cheap, and the house wine in a small restaurant here is usually the same thing you would pay properly for elsewhere. Book dinner in season: the good places have a dozen tables and the town knows which ones they are.
Évora is the rare historic town that is still a working one. The university fills the cafés in term time, the market sells to people who live here, and the monuments are wedged in among ordinary houses rather than fenced off from them.
If you are adding days, the rest of the Alentejo is the reward: the marble towns of Estremoz and Vila Viçosa to the east, the walled hill town of Monsaraz above the reservoir, and a coast to the west that has almost no buildings on it.
Or make it a longer trip
These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Is Évora worth more than a day trip from Lisbon?
- Yes, and the difference is large. Day trippers arrive around eleven and leave by five, which is exactly the window when the town is busiest and hottest. Staying two nights gets you the streets empty in the evening, dinner at a proper Alentejo table, and enough time for the megalithic sites, which are the thing a day trip always drops.
- Can I see the stone circle without a car?
- Yes, by taxi or on a half day tour from town. A taxi will run you out to Almendres and wait, and drivers are used to the request; fix the price first. The last stretch is unmade track, so this is not a walk or a cycle in summer heat.
- How long do I need for the town itself?
- One unhurried day covers the temple, the cathedral, the bone chapel and the aqueduct with time to sit down. Évora is compact and rewards slowness rather than a longer list, which is why the second full day here goes out into the countryside instead.
- When should I go?
- March to May, or late September into October. The Alentejo in July and August regularly passes forty degrees and there is very little shade in a town built of white stone; in winter it is mild but the evenings are cold and some smaller places close.
- Is the Capela dos Ossos suitable for children?
- Most children find it fascinating rather than disturbing, and it is small enough to leave quickly if not. It is a chapel and quiet behaviour is expected, and photography rules are posted at the door.
- How do I turn this into a plan I can change?
- Copy it into JourneyComposer and the three days arrive as an editable itinerary with the town sights and the megalithic sites already mapped, ready to have a night added or the drive out swapped for a tour.