Evora stands upon a gentle eminence in the midst of a vast fertile plain, surrounded by distant mountains, and upon the very summit of the hill, hidden away between narrow, winding streets leading up from the main arcaded praça, stands the venerable Sé—the cathedral of the archbishopric. In a quiet little open space it rears its two solid, square, granite Romanesque towers of the twelfth century, flanked by the whitewashed, monastic-looking palace of the archbishop, the two towers being united by a pure Gothic doorway porch which fills the space between them. The inner doorway pillars are adorned by early Gothic statues of the disciples, all so direct and vivid as to put to shame the affected elaborations of a later time. Slabs in the porch over ancient sarcophagi in Gothic niches tell that all this has been restored in recent years; but it is easy to see that here, at least, the restorer has been reverent and has spoilt nothing. Like most of the Portuguese cathedrals of the period the first effect produced by the interior is that of grave massiveness. The narrow nave and aisles separated by clustered Romanesque pillars, supporting early Gothic arches, very slightly pointed, and a graceful triforium, have all the beauty of serene severity.[11] Here again, the clustered pillars shoot sheer up to the spring of the roof, and carry an arch over to the other side, and the cimborio or lantern at the intersection of the transepts and the nave is especially striking. The pillars that support it on four sides, chancel, nave, and two transepts, are as bold and aspiring as those of Ely, and seem to cry out aloud in exalted triumphant devotion. To gaze up at this cimborio with its lovely groining and its graceful spandrils carried to a prodigious height at one sweep is a sensation worth coming from England to experience. High up on the wall of the nave there is roughly sculptured the life-sized figure of a man, bearing upon his breast a cartouche with the Gothic letters C. C. E. cut upon it, representing, as local antiquarians insist, the figure of the twelfth-century architect of the building, Martin Dominguez, and the coats-of-arms and sepulchral figures in chapels and on walls are many. One florid Gothic sarcophagus in the south transept is that of André de Resende, a relative of Garcia de Resende, the earliest Portuguese historian, whose house, with its beautiful Manueline windows, still stands in Evora. The chapels on each side of the cathedral are much disfigured by tawdry decorations and curly gilt wood carvings, but several have finely painted altar-pieces, badly lit and uncared for; and one altar, Our Lady of the Angel, against a pillar in the nave, evidently much venerated, for it is hung all over with votive offerings, is grotesquely hideous, with its ill-carved, big, staring doll upon a gilt monstrosity of a stand.