teeply descending town, down to the
convent of Santa Clara and the wooded hills beyond the Mondego, is most
beautiful; besides, the courtyard itself is not without interest. In the
centre stands a fountain, and on the south side a stair, carried on a
flying half-arch, leads up to a small porch whose steep pointed roof
rests on two walls, and on one small column.

[Sidenote: Coimbra, Se Velha Sacristy.]

The same bishop also built the sacristy of the old cathedral. Entered by
a passage from the south transept, and built across the back of the
apse, it is an oblong room with coffered barrel vault, lit by a large
semicircular window at the north end. The cornice, of which the frieze
is adorned with eight masks, rests on corbels. On a black-and-white
marble lavatory is the date 1593 and the Cardinal's arms. The two ends
are divided into three tiled panels by Doric columns, and on the longer
sides are presses.

Altogether it is very like the sacristy of Santa Cruz built some thirty
years later, but plainer.

By 1590 or so several Portuguese followers of Terzi had begun to build
churches, founded on his work, but in some respects less like than is
the Se Nova at Coimbra. Such churches are best seen at Coimbra, where
many were built, all now more or less deserted and turned to base uses.
Three at least of these stand on either side of the long Rua Sophia
which leads northwards from the town.

[Sidenote: Coimbra, Sao Domingos.]

The oldest seems to be the church of Sao Domingos, founded by the dukes
of Aveiro, but never finished. Only the chancel with its flanking
chapels and the transept have been built. Two of the churches at Lisbon
and the Se Nova of Coimbra are noted for their extremely long Doric
pilasters. Here, in the chancel the pilasters and the half columns in
the transept are Ionic, and even more disproportionately tall. The
architrave is unadorned, the frieze has corbels set in pairs, and
between the pairs curious shields and strapwork, and the cornice is
enriched with dentils, egg and tongue and modillions. Most elaborate of
all is the barrel vault, where each coffer is filled with round or
square panels surrounded with strapwork.

This vault and the cornice were probably not finished till well on in
the seventeenth century, for on the lower, and probably earlier vaults,
of the side chapels the ornamentation is much finer and more delicate.

The transepts were to have been covered with groined vaults of wh