Judging from the cresting in the dining-room or _Sala de Jantar_, where, except that the ground is brown relieved by large white stars, and that the cusps are green and not blue, the design is exactly the same as in the _Sala dos Arabes_, the tiles there must be at least as old as these crestings; for though older tiles might be given a more modern cresting, the reverse is hardly likely to occur, and if as old as the crestings they may possibly belong to Dom João's time, or at least to the middle of the fifteenth century. (Fig. 9.) These dining-room tiles, and also those in the neighbouring _Sala das Sereias_, are among the most beautiful in the palace. The ground is as usual white, and on each is embossed a beautiful green vine-leaf with branches and tendril. Tiles similar, but with a bunch of grapes added, line part of the stair in the picturesque little _Pateo de Diana_ near at hand, and form the top of the back of the tiled bench and throne in the _Sala do Conselho_, once an open veranda. Most of this bench is covered with tiles of Moorish design, but on the front each is stamped with an armillary sphere in which the axis is yellow, the lines of the equator and tropics green, and the rest blue. These one would certainly take to be of Dom Manoel's time, for the armillary sphere was his emblem, but they are said to be older. Most of the floor tiles are of unglazed red, except some in the chapel, which are supposed to have formed the paving of the original mosque, and some in an upper room, worn smooth by the feet of Dom Affonso VI., who was imprisoned there for many a year in the seventeenth century. When Dom Manoel was making his great addition to the palace in the early years of the sixteenth century he lined the walls of the _Sala dos Cysnes_ with tiles forming a check of green [Illustration: FIG. 8. SALA DOS ARABES. PALACE, CINTRA. _From a photograph by L. Oram, Cintra._] [Illustration: FIG. 9. DINING-ROOM, OLD PALACE. CINTRA. _From a photograph by L. Oram, Cintra._] and white. These are carried up over the doors and windows, and in places have a curious cresting of green cones like Moorish battlements, and of castles. Much older are the tiles in the central _Pateo_, also green and white, but forming a very curious pattern. Of later tiles the palace also has some good examples, such as the hunting scenes with which the walls of the _Sala dos Brazões_ were covered probably at the end of the seventeenth century, during the reign of Dom Pedro II. The palace at Cintra may possess the finest collection of tiles, Moorish both in technique and in pattern, but it has few or none of the second class where the technique remains Moorish but the design is Western. To see such tiles in their greatest quantity and variety one must cross the Tagus and visit the Quinta de Bacalhôa not far from Setubal.