urch of Sao Joao Evangelista at Evora, which tell of the life of San
Lorenzo Giustiniani, Venetian Patriarch, and which are signed and dated
'Antoninus ab Oliva fecit 1711.'[28] But these blue picture-tiles are
almost the commonest of all, and were made and used up to the end of the
century.[29]

Now although some of the patterns used are found also in Spain, as at
Seville or at Valencia, and although tiles from Seville were used at
Thomar by Joao de Castilho, still it is certain that many were of home
manufacture.

As might be expected from the patterns and technique of the oldest
tiles, the first mentioned tilers are Moors.[30] Later there were as
many as thirteen tilemakers in Lisbon, and many were made in the
twenty-eight ovens of _louca de Veneza_, 'Venetian faience.' The tiles
used by Dom Manoel at Cintra came from Belem, while as for the picture
tiles the novices of the order of Sao Thiago at Palmella formed a school
famous for such work.

Indeed it may be said that tilework is the most characteristic feature
of Portuguese buildings, and that to it many a church, otherwise poor
and even mean, owes whatever interest or beauty it possesses. Without
tiles, rooms like the _Sala das Sereias_ or the _Sala dos Arabes_ would
be plain whitewashed featureless apartments, with them they have a charm
and a romance not easy to find anywhere but in the East.

CHAPTER I

THE EARLY BUILDINGS IN THE NORTH

Portugal, like all the other Christian kingdoms of the Peninsula, having
begun in the north, first as a county or march land subject to the king
of Galicia or of Leon, and later, since 1139, as an independent kingdom,
it is but natural to find nearly all the oldest buildings in those parts
of the country which, earliest freed from the Moslem dominion, formed
the original county. The province of Entre Minho-e-Douro has always been
held by the Portuguese to be the most beautiful part of their country,
and it would be difficult to find anywhere valleys more beautiful than
those of the Lima, the Cavado, or the Ave. Except the mountain range of
the Marao which divides this province from the wilder and drier
Tras-os-Montes, or the Gerez which separates the upper waters of the
Cavado and of the Lima, and at the same time forms part of the northern
frontier of Portugal, the hills are nowhere of great height. They are
all well covered with woods, mostly of pine, and wherever a piece of
tolerably level ground can be found