towers, and the wonderful deep
purple of its sandstone walls rising above the whitewashed houses and
palms of the older Silves and backed by the Moorish citadel, it makes a
most picturesque and even striking centre to the town, which, standing
high above the river, preserves the memory of its Moslem builders in
its remarkable and many-towered city walls.[62] (Fig. 27.)

[Sidenote: Beja.]

King Diniz the Labourer, so called for his energy in settling and
reclaiming the land and in fixing the moving sands along the west coast
by plantations of pine-trees, and the son of Dom Affonso and Dona
Beatriz, was a more active builder than any of his immediate
predecessors. Of the many castles built by him the best preserved is
that of Beja, the second town of Alemtejo and the Pax Julia of Roman
times. The keep, built about 1310, is a great square tower over a
hundred feet high. Some distance from the top it becomes octagonal, with
the square fortified by corbelled balconies projecting far out over the
corners. Inside are several stories of square halls finely vaulted with
massive octagonal vaults; below, the windows are little more than slits,
but on one floor there are larger two-light pointed openings.[63]

[Sidenote: Leiria.]

Far finer and larger has been the castle of Leiria, some fifty miles
south of Coimbra: it or the keep was begun by Dom Diniz in 1324.[64] The
rock on which it stands, in steepness and in height recalls that of
Edinburgh Castle, but without the long slope of the old town leading
nearly to the summit: towering high above Leiria it is further defended
on the only accessible quarter by the river Lis which runs round two
sides not far from the bottom of the steep descent. Unfortunately all is
ruined, only enough remaining to show that on the steepest edge of the
rock there stood a palace with large pointed windows looking out over
the town to the green wooded hills beyond. On the highest part stands
what is left of the keep, and a little lower the castle-church whose
bell-tower, built over the gate, served to defend the only access to the
inner fortification. This church, built about the same time, with a now
roofless nave which was never vaulted, is entered by a door on the
south, and has a polygonal vaulted apse. The mouldings of the door as
well as the apse vault and its tall two-light windows show a greater
delicacy and refinement than is seen in almost any earlier building, and
some of the carving ha