COIMBRA - Sè Velha (Old Cathedral of Coimbra )

In 1139, after the Battle of Ourique, King Afonso Henriques decided to finance the building of a new cathedral, given the bad shape of its predecessor. The definitive impulse to the project was given by Bishop Miguel Salomão, who helped pay for the works. In 1185, King Sancho I, second King of Portugal, was crowned in the new cathedral, indicating that the building work was in an advanced state. The basic building was finished in the first decades of the 13th century, even though the cloisters were begun only in 1218, during the reign of King Afonso II. The project of the Romanesque cathedral is attributed to Master Robert, a - possibly - French architect who was directing the building of Lisbon Cathedral at that time and visited Coimbra regularly. Coimbra Cathedral is the only one of the Portuguese Romanesque cathedrals from the Reconquista times to have survived relatively intact up to the present. From the outside, Coimbra's old cathedral looks like a small fortress, this menacing appearance is explained by the belligerent times in which it was built. The north façade has a remarkable, although eroded, Renaissance-style portal called the Porta Especiosa. The three-storey portal was built in the 1530s by French sculptor João de Ruão (Jean of Rouen). The most remarkable aspect of the Romanesque decoration of the Old Coimbra Cathedral is the large number of sculptured capitals (around 380), which turns it into one of the most important ensembles of Romanesque sculpture in Portugal. The main motifs are vegetal and geometric and reveal Arab and pre-romanesque influences, but there are also pairs of quadrupeds (including centaurs) or birds facing each other. There are virtually no human representations, and no Biblical scenes. From the Gothic era (13th-14th centuries) there are several tombs with laying statues along the lateral aisles, some very much eroded. The most remarkable is that of Lady Vataça Lascaris (or Betaça), a Byzantine that came to Portugal in the beginning of the 14th century together with Elizabeth of Aragon, who was to marry King Dinis I. Her tomb carries the symbol of the Byzantine Empire: a two-headed eagle. An important addition, at the turn of the 15th to the 16th century, was the huge wooden retable of the main chapel, carved between 1498 and 1502 by Flemish artists Olivier de Gand and Jean d'Ypres. The retable, in Flamboyant Gothic style, illustrates the history of Mary and Christ and occupies the whole space of the Romanesque main chapel. It is the best of its kind in the country. Other notable features in the interior of the cathedral include a magnificent Renaissance altar dedicated to Jesus and the Apostles by French sculptor Nicolau de Chanterene.
Construction on the cloisters began around 1218, and may have continued until around 1240. It is one of the oldest in the country and shows intermediate features between Romanesque and Gothic.
Source Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Cat...
Filmed with SONY RX10M3 and INSTA360 X3 in March 2023.
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