Wordless Wednesday: Tree Some

Location: Pena Palace Gardens, Sintra Hills, Portugal

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Wordless Wednesday: Black Swan Spotted

Location: Park and Palace of Pena, Sintra Hills, Portugal

 

Wordless Wednesday: Beyond Forgetting

Pena Palace and National Park, Sintra, Portugal (click any picture to enlarge)

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Out of This World

Location: Capela dos Ossos, Évora, Portugal

 
One of the strangest sites that I had visited was Capela dos Ossos (Chapel of Bones) in the Portuguese city of Évora, Portugal. As the name suggests, it’s a chapel whose walls are decorated by skulls and human bones from floor to ceiling.

The main entrance to the chapel bears the inscription, Nós ossos que aqui estamos, pelos vossos esperamos (We, the bones that are here, await yours).

Click any picture to enlarge
 
It’s been said that sometime in the 16th century, the city’s cemeteries were running out of space. This necessitated removing an estimated 5,000 remains from older graves to make room for new ones.

As a result, the Franciscan monks built a chapel as a final resting place for the exhumed bodies. It was following the common belief among Catholics that the dead would be closer to God if they were kept in a sacred place. Rather than placing the remains in the ossuary, however, the monks decided to put them on display to remind the faithful of the ephemeral and transitory nature of life.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Bridge

Location: Porto, Portugal
 
There’s something engaging watching a little girl testing her faith while balancing on an imaginary bridge with her grandfather closely behind her. It’s a good start for life’s great adventure awaiting her.

Faith — is the Pierless Bridge Supporting what We see Unto the Scene that We do not — Too slender for the eye It bears the Soul as bold As it were rocked in Steel With Arms of Steel at either side — It joins — behind the Veil To what, could We presume The Bridge would cease to be To Our far, vacillating Feet A first Necessity. – Emily Dickinson

 

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