Fotos

The title is a play on the name of the place, Batalha in Portuguese/Batalla in Spanish, which means (obviously) battle. This is a monastery built--or rather, partially built--near the site of a decisive renaissance battle in which Portugal repulsed a Spanish invasion. Spain invaded several times, eventually succeeding in bringing Portugal under Spanish control in the 16th or 17th century (I'll look up that date). But at this particular battle at Aljubarrota, which took place in 1385, the Portuguese king begged the Virgin for victory, promising to build the grandest monastery in Portugal if the Portuguese won. They did, and the king and his descendants did build the dominican monastery, really a cathedral, which was never fully completed. It does not function as a monastery or cathedral now (I'm not sure it ever did), but as a national museum wherein lies Portugal's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Soldiers guard the tomb, with its ever-burning oil lamp. For more information, see the Go Lisbon page on Batalha: http://www.golisbon.com/portugal/cities/batalha.html

The monastery itself is enormous; the plaza surrounding it must be the size of all the rest of the tiny town of Batalha! This photo is of color from the afternoon sun shining through magnificent stained glass windows and creating patterns all over the columns and floor of the church. It was taken lying down on the flagstone floor, which earned me some weird looks...but anyway, it's not a functioning church, so I didn't feel too bad about the sacrilege!