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Updated: May 15, 2025
The other doorway, on the south side next the south-west tower, is far better preserved. It has three shafts on each side, all with good capitals and abaci, from which spring two carved and one plain arch.
This, the most pleasing of all the renaissance cloisters in Portugal, has four arches on each side resting on fluted columns which though taller than usual in cloisters, have no entasis. The capitals are exactly like those at Santarem, but being of granite are much coarser, with roses instead of winged heads on the unmoulded abaci.
In these openings there stand three pairs of round coupled shafts with plain bases, rudely carved capitals and large square overhanging abaci, from which spring two pointed arches moulded only on the under side: resting on these, but connected with them or with the enclosing arch by no moulding or fillet, is a small circle, moulded like the arches only on one side and containing a small quatrefoil.
Under the string beneath the rose window are three windows grouped as a triplet, with no label moulding. The centre light is higher than the others. Though each has been much repaired, the early thirteenth-century detail has been retained. The abaci of the capitals are square. The windows have no tracery, and are probably quite fifty years earlier in date than the large rose above them.
These abaci, which are finely moulded, are not more than about two and a half inches in depth. The bases of the jamb-shafts are characteristic of the period during which this work was done. There are two small rounded mouldings, and one larger one. These rest on the square, lower part, of the base.
But the abaci of its capitals run from the jambs across to the buttresses, as is the case with those of the doorway.
Some fifteenth century tracery remained in these windows until it was replaced by the present modern work. The outer arch is in two orders, which are carried by slight attached shafts, some of which are renewals. The capitals to these are carved, and have square abaci, rounded at the angle, as they pass over the capitals.
Four great columns support a cupola in front of the presbytery, by means of four round arches, pendentives, and a drum, round which is an arcade of sixteen stilted round arches with foliated caps and prominently projecting abaci, which it is thought may belong to the original building, though the cupola itself is later.
The space between each corbel is bridged over by small single stones cut out to the shape of a semicircular arch. The windows in the second, third, and fourth bays differ in size and shape from each other; that in the second bay has a pointed arch and no tracery, square abaci and the remains of carved capitals. The angle shafts and bases are gone.
Instead of the thirteen columns on the long sides which one is apt to look for as going with a six-column front, here are eighteen or nineteen, it is not yet quite certain which. The columns stand less than their diameter apart, and the abaci are so broad that they nearly touch.
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