베자 대성당

Beja Cathedral — Beja, PT

Beja Cathedral in southern Alentejo grew from the Church of Saint James founded in 1590 and became a cathedral when the diocese of Beja was created in 1770; behind its Mannerist front run eighteenth-century azulejos and gilded altars. Beja was founded in Roman times as Pax Julia, and Roman and Visigothic remains continue to be excavated near the cathedral. The city entered European literature through the seventeenth-century Letters of a Portuguese Nun, attributed to Mariana Alcoforado writing to a French officer, and the Convent of the Conception where they are set stands a few steps from the cathedral. Inside are a sixteenth-century Mannerist altarpiece and a figure of Saint James, and from the tower the wheat plains of the Alentejo spread in every direction. Few tourists come to this inland southern city, so the square is usually quiet, and in summer pilgrims come early before the heat.