he right towards the great kitchen.

The chapel stands at the northern edge of the palace buildings, having
beyond it a terrace called the Terreiro da Meca or of Mecca; partly from
this name, and partly from the tiles which still cover the middle of the
floor it is believed that the chapel stands exactly on the site of the
Walis' private mosque, with perhaps the chancel added.

The middle of the nave--the chapel consists of a nave and chancel, two
small transeptal recesses, and two galleries one above the other at the
west end--is paved with tiles once glazed and of varying colours, but
now nearly all worn down till the natural red shows through. The pattern
has been elaborate; a broad border of diagonal checks surrounding a
narrow oblong in which the checks are crossed by darker lines so as to
form octagons, and between the outer border and the octagons a band of
lighter ground down which in the middle runs a coloured line having on
each side cones of the common Arab pattern exactly like the palace
battlements.

Now the walls are bare and white, but were once covered with frescoes of
the fifteenth century; the reredos is a clumsy addition of the
eighteenth century.

The cornice and the long pilasters at the entrance to the chancel seem
to have been added at the same time, but the windows and ceiling are
still those of Dom Joao's time. The windows--there are now three, a
fourth in the chancel having been turned into a royal pew--are of two or
three lights, have commonplace tracery, and are only interesting as
being one of the few wholly Gothic features in the palace.

Far more interesting is the ceiling, which is entirely Arab in
construction and in design. In the nave it is an irregular polygon in
section, and in the chancel is nearly a semicircle, having nine equal
sides. The whole of the boarded surface is entirely covered with an
intricate design formed of strips of wood crossing each other in every
direction so as to form stars, triangles, octagons, and figures of every
conceivable shape. The whole still retains its original colouring. At
the centres of the main figures are gilt bosses--the one over the high
altar being a shield with the royal arms--the wooden strips are black
with a white groove down the centre of each, and the ground is either
dark red or light blue. (Fig. 46.)

The whole is of great interest not only for its own sake, but because it
is the only ceiling in the palace which has remained unch