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Évora, bones in the shade of blues.
Photography by Claudine Boeglin
Alentejo. Beyond the Tejo. Beyond meager considerations. Alentejo, theater of shades and blue. White its cities perched on hilltops, white and yellow-framed its houses made labyrinths, glorious churches on large praças within fortress walls. Afar, disseminated olive and cork trees, low-raised vineyards, and livestock fighting for shade draw a timeless painting. In Évora, students in black capes appear and disappear behind arcades as if knights. The slender streets, traversed by thin cables, let the angels rope-walk at night.
Évora is a lively encyclopedia pampering the strada of history with curatorial clarity; Roman ruins, Catholic glory, human resilience. At the medieval Capela dos Ossos (Chapel of Bones), hosted by Franciscan friars, human misery was turned into architecture. Skulls and bones made into vanities serve as the backdrop for selfies. Yet they exhume the memory of other pandemics, in other times, when corpses overwhelmed cemeteries and were hastily buried. Around 5,000 corpses were exhumed to shape the chapel’s walls. On display,
the poem attributed to Fr. António da Ascenção Teles, pároco of the village of São Pedro, begins: “Aonde vais, caminhante, acelerado?” (“Where do you rush, traveler, so swift upon your way?”) Pára… (Pause awhile)…
Photography Claudine Boeglin @dandyvagabond
Photography and text Claudine Boeglin
