The old town of Coimbra clambers up to the top of a very steep hill overlooking the Modego River which flows into the Atlantic Ocean 50km to the west. It is a walled town, and the home of the identity of Portugal as a country as it emerged in the 12th century. The tombs of the first two kings of Portugal lie in the Santa Cruz monastery here.
The streets are narrow and cobbled, alarmingly steep, and packed with tall buildings. Many were abandoned during Portugal’s fascist regime (1933-1974) and now stand with windows broken, graffiti on the walls, and a few wooden boards as a half-hearted attempt at protection. The regime ended in 1974. But the owners have never returned.
The walled town was home to royalty, and the clergy – at first Jesuits. With Jesuits comes education, and here in Coimbra this meant the establishment in 1290 of one of the oldest and most beautiful universities in the world, and now a UNESCO site.
It stands at the very top in a glorious building surrounding a white quadrangle on three sides and a spectacular view over the mountains in the distance and river valley below.
But it is a very odd university.
The students have a dress code – white shirt, black vest, black tie and a floor length black cape. It has not been compulsory since 1910 but still many students choose to wear it. We saw some last night stripping it off and making a big pile of black, so they could go swimming, and we saw students walking around in it at the university. Today it was a relentlessly sunny 30 degrees. And we are a long way from summer.
As if being cloaked in black and having to climb up the hill every day was not enough to put you off study, there is a student prison. This was used for students who disobeyed the rules: only one day if you missed the ludicrous 6pm curfew, but six months in solitary confinement if you disagreed with the Jesuits or the syllabus or the king. No free thinking here, thank you.
The poor students still had to go to class – dragged up some narrow stairs by the guards for class but taken straight back afterwards. Even professors got put in prison sometimes for “academic crimes” ie disagreeing.
Despite this Draconian approach to education, people were desperate to be accepted. It was not easy to get in. There is a special room called the Private Examination room. Here you would spend a day locked in for an exam and judgement as to whether you were adequate. The Jesuits and professors could reject you for any reason – if they didn’t like the look on your face, or you hadn’t prayed at the chapel beforehand.
I was especially interested to see the Great Hall of Acts. A huge hall with red velvet and wooden benches, a psychedelic ceiling, and portraits of all the kings of Portugal in monumental procession marching around the upper walls.
This was once the throne room but later a place for the public acts and debates of the university. And one such public act is still to this day the defence of the doctoral thesis. This is the oral exam you have at the end, when academics and experts will challenge and question your work.
In one corner of this huge hall there is a little tiny desk at which the PhD candidate sits. A long bench contains the academics who will examine her, and another bench, a long way away, will contain the tutors who are there to help. Not because they care, our guide was quick to clarify, but because their name and reputation is also at stake.
Above the prison is the famous Joanin Library. It is truly glorious, with three interconnected rooms about three floors high, filled with ancient books (mainly in Latin and a lot of bibles). The ceilings are painted with colourful muses representing the various subjects (law, medicine, arts and theology) and huge tables made of jacaranda wood surrounded by benches which show where the students used to work.
They would ring a bell in the middle of the table for the librarians to come and find new books for them. This must have been quite a feat, involving numerous ladders and hidden staircases. There were also lists of forbidden heretical works. I think we all know what would happen if you were found with those!
You are only allowed in for 10 minutes (a bell rings loudly to tell you when time’s up), and no photos at all are allowed. There are guards watching, and they descend on you pretty quick if you disobey. Some creatures they can’t control: tiny insects that like to eat the books, which are mainly made of goat skin. And the bats which slip in and out at will. But as they eat the insects, they are not unwelcome.
According to our guide, Coimbra is the university. That is the only reason people come here. For the university and the hospitals (unexplained). And there are 28,000 students at Coimbra now. They love it here and when they leave they spend their last month wandering the streets and serenading Coimbra and the memory of their student love affairs, and burning parts of their clothes (I can understand why) before they depart for their adult lives.
Glad I didn’t attend that university! 👀