April 26, 2025 Santa Clara-A-Nova Monastery, Coimbra (St. Clare the New Monastery, Coimbra)
This post will cover the new monastery of St. Clare, and by "new" I mean it was built from 1640-1696. (Old St. Clare was built beginning in 1286 and its abandoned ruins will be in another post.) When we use the term "monastery" today, we are usually referring to a community of men, but historically, the term was used for a community of men OR of women. The St. Clare New Monastery was a community of nuns from the order of St. Clare (friend of St. Francis of Assisi) also known as the Poor Clare's.
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| The monastery is on the top of the hill. We walked across the river to reach it. |
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| View from the monastery. The yellow dot is our apartment. |
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| The layout of the monastery. |
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| The altar in the church. |
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| The glass and silver tomb of Queen St. Isabel (Elizabeth in English) that holds her incorrupt body. The ticket seller said this summer, the diocese will uncover her right hand for the faithful to view. The year 2025 is an anniversary or something. |
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| Looking towards the back of church. |
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| One side of church. |
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| A view from the back corner of church. We attended Sunday Mass here. It was lovely. |
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| This room is the low choir. The tomb in the center is St. Isabel's original tomb, before the silver and glass one on the altar, sculpted in 1326-1328 out of one piece of anca stone (a type of limestone unique to Portugal). |
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| The queen chose the apostles for one side of the tomb. |
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| Poor Clare nuns, a bishop, and St. Francis adorn this side. |
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| The back of the low choir. |
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| Next, we headed outside to the cloister. |
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| I have fallen in love with cloisters! I wonder if I could convince Rod into building one in the backyard. |
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| Our Lady of Conception. |
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| Queen Isabel, the patron saint of Coimbra. |
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| A view of Coimbra from the Santa Clara bridge. |
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| We finished the day eating at another Korean restaurant. |
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| That's a mural on the wall. |
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