The Capela dos Ossos (English: Chapel of Bones) is one of Évora’s most well-known structures. It is a modest internal chapel placed near the entrance of the Church of St. Francis. The Chapel derives its name because the interior walls are adorned and ornamented with human skulls and bones.
Franciscan monks constructed the Capela dos Ossos. Approximately 5,000 corpses were unearthed and used to decorate the chapel’s walls. The bones belonged to common people buried in Évora’s medieval cemetery.
The chapel is composed of three spans measuring 18.7 meters in length and 11 meters in width. Three small slots on the left allow light to enter. Its eight pillars and walls are adorned with meticulously arranged bones and skulls bound together by cement. The ceiling is built of white-painted masonry with death images painted on it. Around 5000 friars’ remains were discovered in cemeteries located inside several dozen churches. Graffiti has been scrawled on some of these skulls. Two desiccated bodies are shown in glass cases, one of which is a toddler. Additionally, the line “Melior est die mortis die nativitatis (Better is the day of death than the day of birth)” (Ecclesiastes, 7, 1) is inscribed on the chapel’s dome in Vulgate.
