nner, so that clearly Dom Joao's hall
was built in front of a part of the Walis' palace, a part which has
quite disappeared except for this wall.

From the east end of this lower hall a straight stair, which looks as if
it had once been an outside stair, leads up to a winding stair by which
another hall is reached, whose floor lies at a level of about 26 feet
above the terrace.[94] From this hall, which may be of later date than
Dom Joao's time, a door leads down to the central pateo or courtyard, or
else going up a few steps the way goes through a smaller square room,
once an open verandah, through a wide doorway inserted by Dom Manoel
into the great Swan Hall. This hall, the largest room in the palace,
measuring about 80 feet long by 25 wide, is so called from the swans
painted in the eight-sided panels of its wonderful roof. The story is
that while the palace was still building ambassadors came to the king
from the duke of Burgundy asking for the hand of his daughter Isabel.
Among other presents they brought some swans, which so pleased the young
princess that she made them collars of red velvet and persuaded her
father to build for them a long narrow tank in the central court just
under the north windows of this hall. Here she used to feed them till
she went away to Flanders, and from love of his daughter King Joao had
the swans with their collars painted on the ceiling of the hall. The
swans may still be seen, but not those painted for Dom Joao, for all the
mouldings clearly show that the present ceiling was reconstructed some
centuries later. The hall is lit by five windows looking south across
the entrance court to the Moorish castle on the hill beyond, and by
three looking over the swan tank into the central pateo.

These windows, and indeed all those in Dom Joao's part of the palace,
are very like each other. They are nearly all of two lights--never of
more--and are made of white marble. In every case there is a
square-headed moulded frame enclosing the whole window, the outer
mouldings of this frame resting on small semicircular corbels, and
having Gothic bases. Inside this framework stand three slender shafts,
with simple bases and carved capitals. These capitals are not at all
unlike French capitals of the thirteenth century, but are really of a
common Moorish pattern often found elsewhere, as in the Alhambra. On
them, moulded at the ends, but not in front or behind, rest abaci, from
which spring stilted ar