Largo da Porta de Moura

Porta de Moura and its front grounds are of Roman origin. The main north-south street of the city of Liberalitas Iulia that connected the city to Pax Iulia, today Beja, passed through here. However, the Largo acquired particular importance from the 14th century onward, when a greater number of families of titled nobility begin to settle in its surroundings, outside the original walls. Together with Praça de Giraldo and Largo Luís de Camões, they were the main squares outside the walls, through which the urban growth lines of Évora were defined from the Christian Reconquest of 1165 onward. In its centre there is a fountain, which Cardinal King D. Henrique referred to, in 1556, as “the noblest thing in this city”. A marble labyrinth, representative of the regal gift and challenge of bringing water to the city, with the construction of the Água da Prata Aqueduct. In the sphere, perhaps a reflection of the Empire’s conquests, an allegorical banner: “…by whom the rock was changed into a sheet of water, and the stone into a fountain of living water…“. The name of Largo, unchanged since 1286, reveals the possibility that it was in its surroundings that the first Mouraria de Évora was located, after the conquest of Giraldo Sem-Pavor.

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Sinais Internacionais / Internacional Signs