Storm clouds swirled in this morning, towering billows of dark grey shot with silver, outtakes from a gloomy Baroque masterpiece threatening to unleash the fury of two weeks worth of withheld rain. With the temperature dropping it was time for the down vest and knit cap along with the umbrella.
Today we were going to check out the heralded campus of the University of Coimbra. That’s the thing about founding your school in the Middle Ages, you get use modifiers like “heralded “. You also don’t feel shy about having a grand 100+ step entrance to the campus.
At the top of the stairs we entered a wide avenue of monumental colleges, and it started to drizzle. Ella was wearing her rain parka, but missed (out loud) having an umbrella. Straight to God’s ears. (The Jesuits didn’t put their college on top of a hill for nothing.) A meandering vendor, arm draped with umbrellas, happened to be walking by. (3 euros; you climb the steps, God doesn’t screw you over.)
I was bent on seeing the 500 year old library, but it wasn’t open to visitors for another hour, so we hit the exhibit at the ChemLab. Judging from the collected vellum, you got to hand it to the Jesuits—they tried to unlock God’s mysteries with an eye to Aristotle and algebra, but they didn’t want to end up like Galileo, so no great names linked to discoveries emerge.
Wandering through rooms filled with the instruments of failed experiments, I caught a glimpse of what my inner monk may have doing before his Big Lapse.
There he is mixing up an alchemical batch, probably getting ready to hoodwink some Royal patron. “A sip of this and your carbuncles turn into rubies and drop to the ground. Rub these dazzling wine red gems against silk and you’ll realize the scintillating properties of the Philosopher’s Stone. In return all I ask for is the key to the Benedictine brandy cellars.”
The library? What library? Oh, the Baroque Library. With a big push by King John V it was built in the early 1700s. The Noble Floor has three halls with verandas and shelves to the ceiling ornamented with gold and carved wood and heavy inlaid tables where one can heave the two foot twenty-pound volumes to look up such things as whether an angel is faster than a cannonball. What is intriguing about this chapel devoted to books is that one can imagine it influencing the design of the Harry Potter bookstore in Porto.
Apropos Harry Potter, it is my firm conviction that J.K. Rowing got her inspiration for the series Potter books when she was here in Portugal teaching and was fascinated by the Portuguese students in capes. They looked so much like junior magicians, after all…
After the overdone ormolu of the Baroque library, I couldn’t resist dragging Ella to the Royal Palace at the other end of the plaza. Nice ceiling.
A churchy layout for the attending throng to wait upon the judgement of that fancily dressed dude sitting all by himself on the raised red-carpeted platform. Of course the dude—one of the Doms—had only one question: “Where is the infernal monk who had me drink that poison?”