Well, this day was a dead loss, as I somehow got food poisoning, and didn't have the strength to leave the hotel room.
Jess did something interesting, though; and something not for the faint-hearted. She got a bus to Evora, a nearby province of Portugal, and saw the Capela dos Ossos: a chapel made out of human bones.
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| Apparently, this was the skeleton of one of the guys who built the place. |
Yes, that is right. Human bones. According to Sacred Destinations, the chapel was created by some Fransiscan monks in the 16th century, because the cemeteries were getting full. Instead of just storing the bones somewhere, the monks decided to use them (skulls and all) to build the chapel. Apparently, it was 'an opportunity to contemplate and communicate the inevitability of death.' The estimated number of skeletons used to build the chapel is 5000.
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| Normal-looking... except the skulls along the edge of each panel. |
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