A Roman temple still stands at the top of the hill. A cathedral the colour of storm clouds looms over the rooftops. And in a side chapel near the main square, five thousand skeletons have been arranged into walls, pillars, and ceiling patterns by monks who wanted you to think about your own mortality. Évora is a small city that refuses to be quiet about its past.

These are only three of the sights that make Évora one of the most fascinating cities in Portugal. Within the medieval walls you will also find one of the oldest universities in the country, a 16th-century aqueduct that runs straight into the old town, a Renaissance church guarded by four stone giants, and the ruins of a royal palace where Vasco da Gama had his flags blessed before sailing for India.

What I find most appealing about Évora is that these landmark sights are only the beginning. Between the headline monuments lies a warren of cobbled lanes where artisan shops sell cork handbags and Alentejo wines, and family-run tascas serve some of the best slow-cooked food in the country. You could tick off the main attractions in a morning, but I would urge you to take longer.

I have been exploring Portugal since 2001 and, together with my Portuguese wife, I have returned to Évora many times over the years, whether as a day trip from Lisbon or a longer base for exploring the wider Alentejo. This guide walks you through the best sights and activities in Évora, from the essential landmarks to the quieter churches, gardens, and viewpoints worth seeking out, so you can plan a visit that does justice to everything the city has to offer.
Related articles: Introduction to Evora

Évora packs a remarkable amount into a small historic centre, and these are the ten I would not want you to miss:
1) Roman Temple - beautifully preserved ancient temple with elegant granite columns
2) Sé Cathedral - imposing Gothic cathedral with stunning rooftop views
3) Capela dos Ossos (Chapel of Bones) - macabre chapel lined with 5,000 skeletons
4) University of Évora - Portugal's second oldest university with historic courtyards
5) Praça do Giraldo - bustling main square and heart of the city
6) Almendres Cromlech (neolithic stones) - 6,000-year-old stone circle outside the city
7) Aqueduct de Prata - impressive 16th-century aqueduct with towering stone arches
8) São Francisco church - historic Franciscan church housing the bone chapel
9) Jardim Público de Évora - peaceful public gardens with palace ruins
10) Évora Museum - local history museum with archaeological treasures

The map below shows the location of the main sights of Evora (Note: Zoom out to see all of the points)

Key 1) Roman Temple 2) Sé Cathedral 3) Capela dos Ossos (Chapel of Bones) 4) University of Évora 5) Praça do Giraldo 6) Almendres Cromlech (neolithic stones) 7) Aqueduct de Prata 8) São Francisco church 9) Jardim Público de Évora 10) Évora Museum 11) Rua Cinco de Outubro 12) Igreja da Graça 13) Igreja de São João Evangelista 14) Palácio de Dom Manuel I 15) Fonte das Portas de Moura 16) Igreja do Salvador do Mundo 17) Arco Romano de Dona Isabel

Standing at the highest point of Évora is a magnificent Roman temple, whose 12 ancient granite columns have watched over the city for more than 2,000 years. It is widely regarded as the best-preserved Roman structure on the Iberian Peninsula, and on my first visit I remember being struck by how casually it sits there, open to the sky at the edge of a small garden, with no fence or ticket booth to mark its importance.

The temple owes its survival to a series of fortunate reinventions. First it was absorbed into the walls of Évora Castle in the 11th century, then it served as a medieval butcher's shop, and later as a humble wood store. The brick walls added between the columns concealed the classical architecture for centuries, but they also held the structure together, protecting the columns from collapse. The medieval brickwork was finally removed during a restoration project completed in 1871, and the temple's true significance was recognised when UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site in 1986.

There were 18 Corinthian columns when the temple was constructed, with 14 still standing today

The 12 Corinthian columns that remain standing rise nearly 8 metres high, topped with Corinthian capitals carved with acanthus leaves, marigolds, sunflowers, and roses. The marble was quarried locally, a small detail that I always find quite moving, as it means the stone you are looking at came from the same Alentejo hills that surround the city today.

Despite its popular name, the temple was almost certainly not dedicated to Diana the hunting goddess. The evidence suggests it was devoted to the imperial cult of Augustus, and the Diana connection only emerged in the 17th century through a tale invented by a local priest. The story stuck, and the adjoining garden still carries the name Jardim de Diana.

Have you considered an organised tour to Évora?
An organised tour is a fantastic way to discover Évora, particularly if you are staying in Lisbon. The quality of tours in Portugal is very high, with knowledgeable and enthusiastic guides who design tours for modern tourists. A tour combines many attractions into a single day and avoids the hassle of public transportation.
We have worked with GetYourGuide over the past six years, and some of their best excursions to Évora departing from Lisbon include:

If Évora has a heart, this is where you will find it. Eight streets converge on the Praça do Giraldo, fanning out from a central Renaissance fountain whose eight marble spouts were deliberately designed to mirror them. For me, this is the plaza to settle into for a slow meal followed by an even slower drink, and to watch the world go by.

The square takes its name from Giraldo Sem Pavor, or Gerald the Fearless, the Christian knight who retook Évora from the Moors in 1165 through a night-time surprise attack. His reward was the governorship of the city, and his likeness still appears on Évora's coat of arms, mounted on horseback with a bloodied sword.

The fountain at the centre is older than the name. Construction began in 1571, and when King Filipe II saw it in 1619 he is said to have declared that it deserved to be crowned, which is why a small stone crown sits on top to this day. The eight spouts once supplied the city with fresh water from the aqueduct.

The Igreja de Santo Antão and Fonte da Praça

The square conceals a darker history. In 1484, King João II had his brother-in-law, the Duke of Bragança, beheaded here for conspiring with Spanish nobility to overthrow him. Worse was to come in the 16th century, when the Praça do Giraldo served as the regional court for the Inquisition. Autos-da-fé were held in public, and on the most notorious occasion, in 1573, convicted heretics were burnt alive on pyres built in the centre of the square.

Today the mood could not be more different. The Igreja de Santo Antão church dominates the northern end, its plain 16th-century facade rising above the cafés and shops. The arcades on either side, with their Moorish-inspired arches, shelter craft shops, the city's tourist office, and Café Arcada, a local favourite since 1942.

Above the entrance to this small chapel, carved into the marble, is an inscription that sets the tone: "Nos ossos que aqui estamos pelos vossos esperamos." "We, the bones that are here, await yours." Step inside and you will understand why the Capela dos Ossos is the most visited sight in Évora.

The chapel is lined, floor to ceiling, with the bones of more than 5,000 skeletons, exhumed from the city's graveyards in the 16th century and arranged by Franciscan monks as a meditation on mortality. The majority of the bones are stacked carefully into the walls without mortar, held in place only by the skill with which they were fitted together. Femurs line the central pillars, skulls form bands around the arches, and smaller bones have been worked into decorative motifs across every surface. On the vaulted ceiling, faded 19th-century frescoes depict scenes of death, and in a glass case near the altar lie two mummified bodies, an adult and a child, exhumed from the same graveyards.

The effect on modern visitors is unsettling, but the intent was pastoral rather than ghoulish. The monks were responding to the Counter-Reformation, and the message was aimed at a wealthy, overly comfortable city: life is short, worldly concerns are fleeting, and death comes for everyone. What reads today as morbid was, in the 17th century, a fairly direct sermon in stone.

The entrance fee is €7, with concessions of €5 for youths and seniors, and free entry for children under 12. I would think carefully, though, before bringing a young child inside. My niece was genuinely frightened by the chapel, and looking back we wish we had not taken her in. The chapel is small and a typical visit takes only 15 to 20 minutes, but its fame means it can become crowded. My advice is to arrive at opening time, which is 9:00, or late in the afternoon, and to avoid the mid-morning and early afternoon tour bus windows between roughly 10:30 and 15:00

Countless skulls stare down from the walls of the Capela dos Ossos

Évora sits on a hill with no river and no springs of its own, and for centuries the city struggled with water during the long Alentejo summers. The solution, commissioned by King João III in 1531 and completed just six years later in 1537, is one of the most impressive engineering projects of 16th-century Portugal. The Aqueduto da Água de Prata, or Aqueduct of Silver Water, still carries water into Évora today, almost 500 years after it was built.

The man behind the design was Francisco de Arruda, the royal architect better known for the Belém Tower in Lisbon. His task was to bring water from a year-round spring in Graça do Divor, 18km to the northwest, across a landscape of hills and valleys and into the heart of the city. For much of the route the water flows through underground tunnels, but where the land falls away the engineers built a series of massive stone arches, the highest of which rises 26 metres above the ground.

The name Água de Prata (Silver Water) has two competing explanations. Some say it refers to the silvery glint of the water running through the channels in moonlight. Others, more cynically, point to the vast sums of silver the project required to build, and I suspect they are closer to the truth.

What makes the aqueduct unusual is what happens when it reaches the city. Rather than standing apart as a monument, it has been absorbed into the fabric of Évora itself. Along the Rua do Cano, which follows the final stretch inside the walls, houses, shops and small cafés have been built directly into the arches, with front doors opening between the stone columns and washing lines strung across what were once waterways. I find this one of the most charming corners of Évora, a place where 16th-century engineering has simply become part of daily life.

The arches start relatively small along the Rua do Cano

But soon, they tower above the houses and street

Long before the Romans laid a single stone in Évora, Neolithic farmers were dragging great blocks of granite across these hills and arranging them into Europe's largest circle of standing stones. The Almendres Cromlech was begun around 6000 BC and remained in active use for nearly 3,000 years, making it one of the oldest megalithic monuments in the world, and by some margin the most important on the Iberian Peninsula.

The site today consists of 95 almond-shaped granite menhirs, set out in two linked formations: a smaller, older ring to the east, constructed around 6000 BC, and a larger oval to the west added roughly a thousand years later. Around 3000 BC, many of the stones appear to have been carefully repositioned so that they aligned with the movements of the sun, moon, and stars. The exact purpose of the site is still debated, with most archaeologists divided between a ceremonial or religious role and use as a primitive astronomical observatory, although the two are not mutually exclusive.

What struck me on my first visit was the quality of the stones themselves. A handful of the menhirs carry carved decorations that have survived six thousand years of weather: shepherd's crooks, spirals, wavy lines, circles, and cup-marks. Their exact meaning is unknown, but the crook motif is thought to reflect the growing importance of herding and the domestication of animals as these Neolithic communities moved from hunting to farming.

The Almendres Cromlech are a good day trip from Evora

The Sé Cathedral is the largest medieval cathedral in Portugal, with its construction beginning in 1186, just twenty years after Gerald the Fearless retook the city from the Moors. It was here in 1497 that the flags of Vasco da Gama's ships were blessed before he set sail for India, a fitting detail for a cathedral built at the height of Portuguese ambition.

The Sé is one of Portugal's finest examples of the transition from Romanesque to Gothic, a rare survival given how many of the country's medieval churches were destroyed in the 1755 earthquake. Its fortress-like exterior, thick with rose granite walls and battlements, leaves no doubt that this was a Christian stronghold in a recently Moorish city. Look closely at the two towers and you will notice they do not match: one is a clock and bell tower, the other a conical spire covered in medieval blue tiles. It is one of my favourite small details of the cathedral. Flanking the main portal below are 14th-century statues of the twelve apostles, widely regarded as some of the finest Gothic sculpture in Portugal.

Inside, the mood shifts. A long, cavernous nave stretches 70 metres ahead of you, lit softly by two Gothic rose windows. Above the crossing, an octagonal stone dome rises into a lantern of windows, built during the reign of King Dinis and, to my eye, the finest thing in the cathedral. Walk to the far end, however, and you step into another century entirely. The main chapel was rebuilt in the 18th century in full Roman Baroque, its walls sheathed in coloured marble from Italy, Estremoz, and Sintra. Whether it belongs in a medieval cathedral is a matter of taste, but the craftsmanship is hard to fault.

Look out, too, for two remarkable depictions of the Virgin Mary: a rare 15th-century statue of a visibly pregnant Mary beside the altar, and, in the Sacred Art Museum, a small 13th-century ivory Virgin whose body opens into a triptych of nine scenes from her life.

For most visitors, though, the highlight is not inside at all. A narrow spiral staircase of 135 steps leads up from one of the towers to the cathedral roof, and the views from the top are the best in Évora. You can look down over the cloisters, across the whitewashed rooftops of the old town, and out to the Alentejo plain beyond.

The cloister of the Cathedral

There is a magnificent view from the top of the roof of the cathedral

One of the main exports of the Alentejo region is cork, and there is no better place to see the varied uses (and gifts!) than along the Rua Cinco de Outubro.

This very pretty street leads from the Praça do Giraldo up to the cathedral and is lined with numerous craft and artisan gift shops. Within the shops, you can find cork that has been created into bags, shoes, ornaments and even clothes.

At the top of the street is the Rota dos Vinhos do Alentejo, which offers wine tasting of the Alentejo region's wines. Another highlight is the Páteo restaurant which, along with its delicious food, allows you to see what the courtyard of a traditional house looks like.

The Igreja da Graça is a beautiful example of Renaissance architecture and is notable for its four Atlas-style figures that represent the four corners of the Earth - and the implied power of King João III.

The inside of the church is very bare, having been abandoned after the abolition of religious orders in 1834, with its religious art and altars transferred to the Igreja de São Francisco.

Encircling the historic centre of Evora are the medieval walls, which were constructed during the 15th century under the order of King Afonso IV. These are known as the ‘new walls’ and are some of the best-preserved walls in Portugal, being fully intact and extending for 9km.

There is a very scenic pathway on the outside of the walls, offering a pleasant route for an evening stroll if you have longer in the city.

The gardens and pathway around the outside of the city walls

The Cerca Romana walls protected the original Roman settlement at the top of the hill and were later strengthened by the Moors. Sections of these inner walls, along with the towers, are dotted around the historic centre.

Two Moorish towers of the Portas de Moura gateway

The University of Evora is the second oldest in Portugal, being established in 1559, and was controlled by the influential Jesuits. It was forced to close in 1779 after a power struggle between the Portuguese nobility and the Jesuits, which led to the expulsion of the Jesuits from Portugal. The university was only re-established in 1971.

The university is centred around the delightful Colégio do Espírito Santo, which was originally the monastery for the Espírito Santo church. Inside the university building, the historic teaching rooms are lined with azulejos tile paintings.

The courtyard of the Colégio do Espírito Santo, which was originally a monastery complex

The Igreja de São João Evangelista is famed for having some of Portugal's finest azulejos tile paintings, which depict scenes of the Patriarch of Venice and were painted in 1711.

The church was originally constructed as the private pantheon of the Cadaval family, who owned the attached Cadaval Palace.

The beautiful, tiled interior of the church

The Palácio Manuel was the magnificent royal palace during the Portuguese Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries. It was here that King Manuel I blessed the flags of Vasco da Gama before his voyage to India (1498), and it was also the wedding venue of King Afonso and Isabel in 1490.

The mighty palace once extended to the Igreja de São Francisco, and included the area where the Mercado Municipal stands today. Sadly, all that remains is the Women's Wing, with its late-Gothic design. Much of the site has been transformed into the Jardim Público and is a pretty park.

The women’s wing is all that remains of this once grand palace

The Ruínas Fingidas (Feigned Ruins) are not from the palace, but were scavenged from around Evora and added to the Jardim Público park as a feature

The Museu de Evora hosts a range of exhibits including archaeological artefacts, paintings and important historical items from Evora. A highlight is the display of 13 panels depicting the life of the Virgin Mary, which originally hung in the cathedral.

The Fonte das Portas de Moura was the second set of fountains in Evora where water from the aqueduct flowed out from. The lower tank was used for animals.

The Igreja do Salvador do Mundo.

The main attraction of Evora is the charm of the city itself, and there is no better method to experience the city than by simply getting lost in the old quarter. Evora is a maze of immaculately maintained cobbled streets and traditionally painted houses. Along every street there is a delightful shop, pretty building or small hidden church to enjoy, and these minor sights that are never listed in any guidebooks cannot be discovered without simply wondering around the city.

The pretty and traditional streets of Evora