Minha Morada em Portugal

Saturday we thought we had tickets to see the Joanina Library so we climbed up the hill to the University. We were on time, but didn’t go to the right meeting point because it turned out that we actually had tickets to a much more extensive guided tour of all the original palace buildings. While we were waiting at the library, the tour we were supposed to go on must have left and we missed them since we had to run across the back across the plaza to the meeting point. Everyone there was very helpful and we were told that someone would come and pick us up in a few minutes. We didn’t realize until later that we ended up getting a private tour because we had missed the other tour. We were so thrilled that this is what happened because our tour guide, Daniel, was just wonderful – we loved Daniel so much! It is such a fantastic experience when a tour guide really knows what they’re doing. (Maura and I had this experience in Mexico City as well with Carlos at the National Anthropology Museum) Finding someone with a really personal approach, but who really knows their stuff academically can really change your entire experience of a place or a city.

The halls inside the main buildings were amazing. King Joao (the 3? The 5th? I need to check) had repurposed an existing palace for the use of the university and it is now a gorgeous campus. Right away, Daniel showed us a room that has been used for hundreds of years for doctoral students to defend their PhD dissertations. The students are in full academic regalia and stand at the front of this room for 3 to 4 hours with the faculty behind them. For decades, these intimidating presentations have been open to the public, bringing the anxiety level very high for those in the hot seat!

The university chapel is stunning, and has an organ in it with over two thousand working pipes. Daniel said that a “normal” pipe organ for a chapel of this size would have approximately 80 pipes. They literally have to take care and clear the area before they crank this one up because it is so loud!

Also, if you take classes at the University for only 6 months – even just continuing education classes – you are allowed to use the chapel to get married. Fancy!

The university prison, Prisão Acadêmica, is the first thing you see going into the Library building. Daniel said the reasons that students were thrown in jail were not violent or even criminal. Students could be imprisoned in a larger group room, or even worse, a small, solitary confinement room for crimes such as overdue fines, damaging a book, skipping classes, writing in the margins of books, etc., etc., for six months at a time! (we couldn’t help but think that every student we know now would have ended up in prison with these regulations…) The ceilings were also extremely low and the conditions were not conducive to learning… Or living!

The library, Biblioteca Joanina, is absolutely fantastic, straight out of a storybook. Portugal’s King João V who was a true advocate for knowledge for all (well, you know, all the upper classes) commissioned it in 1717, and it was designed by a man named Gaspar Ferreira. There are restrictions on taking photos of the library so we didn’t – I’ve grabbed this marketing pic off the web and a video too…

Upon entering, the library is breathtaking. Trompe l’oeil ceilings cover these lush book-filled rooms- you would never know by just looking at it that it is not made of marble but actually all made of wood. The bookcases and decorative hardware are painted in gold leaf. The upper shelves are accessed through hidden stairways. The shelves display more than 60,000 volumes dating from before the 1700s and the books are still available for circulation and use today for researchers. It’s like a fairytale set – in fact, Daniel told us that the rooms were the inspiration for the Beast’s Library in the live action Emma Watson version of “Beauty and the Beast.”

But the best part of this is how they maintain the collection (along with more modern conservation methods) – A colony of about 50 bats live in one of the bookcases. These bats consume insects, especially moths, that could destroy the books. The bats are completely free-range – they fly out from the library every night (to supplement dinner, because there aren’t enough insects inside) and come back to roost. Each night, library staff cover the reading tables and floors with leather coverings to protect them from bat guano (droppings), then clean the library and floors religiously each morning.

The tour was amazing and – we just love Daniel.

Afterwards we went to the National Museum Machado de Castro next to the Library area and saw some beautiful medieval art. But.. the most notable thing about this museum experience was that the guides were extremely insistent about how we should see the exhibits. Considering how large and open the whole building was, it felt a little strange. We wanted to see the ceramics and jewelry areas but they kept trying to push us through a predetermined order of the exhibits and basically followed us through the building… “Don’t you want to see the terracotta reliefs?” Maura needed to tactfully step in so we could chart our own course – she’s good at that.

Afterwards we had a lovely late lunch on the veranda overlooking a spectacular view of Coimbra.