Like the Serra church it is, outside, two stories in height having Doric pilasters below--coupled at the angles of the towers--and Ionic above. In the western apse, the pilasters are replaced by tall detached Doric columns, and the Ionic pilasters above by buttresses which grow out of voluted curves. Large, simply moulded windows are placed between the upper pilasters, with smaller blank windows above them, while in the western apse arches with niches set between pediment-bearing pilasters lead into the church. Here, in Santa Engracia, is a church designed in the simplest and most severe classic form, and absolutely free of all the fantastic misuse of fragments of classic detail which had by that time become so common, and which characterise such fronts as those of the Sé Nova at Coimbra or the Collegio Novo at Oporto. The niches over the entrance arches are severe but well designed, as are the windows in the towers and all the mouldings. Perhaps the only fault of the detail is that the Doric pilasters and columns are too tall. Now in its unfinished state the whole is heavy and clumsy, but at the same time imposing and stately from its great size; but it is scarcely fair to judge so unfinished a building, which would have been very different had its dome and four encompassing towers risen high above the surrounding apses and the red roofs of the houses which climb steeply up the hillside. [Sidenote: Coimbra, Santa Clara.] The new convent of Santa Clara at Coimbra was begun about the same time--in 1640--on the hillside overlooking the Mondego and the old church which the stream has almost buried; and, more fortunate than Santa Engracia, it has been finished, but unlike it is a building of little interest. The church is a rectangle with huge Doric pilasters on either side supporting a heavy coffered roof. There are no aisles, but shallow altar recesses with square-headed windows above. The chancel at the south end is like the nave but narrower; the two-storied nuns' choir is to the north. As the convent is still occupied it cannot be visited, but contains the tomb of St. Isabel, brought from the old church, in the lower choir, and her silver shrine in the upper. Except for the cloister, which, designed after the manner of the Claustro dos Filippes at Thomar, has coupled Doric columns between the arches, and above, niches flanked by Ionic columns between square windows, the rest of the nunnery is even heavier and more barrack-like than the church. Indeed almost the only interest of the church is the use of the huge Doric pilasters, since from that time onward such pilasters, usually as clumsy and as large, are found in almost every church.