Monastery of Batalha
I was immensely impressed with the Royal Cloister. It seems like the builders really give it their all here. There was a nice mix of gothic and Manueline archiectural styles to produce what is the most elaborate design I have seen in Portugal so far. Granted that I have only been to two places here in Portugal this trip, that is probably not a very big sample size. However, I don’t doubt that people would be impressed with what they see here. After all, it took over the reign of seven kings to finish the structure, technically, it wasn’t finished but that is another story.
Screen at the Royal Cloister at the Monstery of Batalha
I can’t help but admire the intricate design of the arches and pillars at the royal cloister. This is probably the first time that I have seen screens at a cloister and I was surprised to see that it is made of stone as well. Imagine a screen which was made of stone. The level of skill required to build something like that is probably very high. I don’t know if it was only one person who did all these but it would be very difficult to imagine if it really was one person looking at the scale of the resulting structure.
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