Royal Palace of Évora

The Royal Palace of Évora (Portuguese: Paço Real de Évora), also known as the Royal Palace of São Francisco (Paço Real de São Francisco) and the Palace of King Manuel I (Palácio de D. Manuel), is a former royal residence of the Kings of Portugal, in Évora, capital of the Alentejo.

The palace has its origins in a convent built in the 13th century. During the 14th century, the convent came under royal use when the royal family was in the Alentejo, but only became a proper palace under the reign of King John I, who used it as a personal retreat from the court. It became a royal palace during King Afonso V's reign, though it was the successive reigns of King John II and Manuel I that turned the originally ordinary palace into a grandiose renaissance palace, truly fit for a king. Over the centuries, the palace fell prey to war, decay, and urban redevelopment, which destroyed nearly all of the palace, with only a few segments of the palace still existing.

The Royal Palace of Évora was one of the centers of the Portuguese Renaissance, under King Manuel I, where playwrights, like Gil Vicente, and explorers, like Vasco da Gama, sought audiences with the king. During this time, the palace was constantly being added to and worked on, a never ending piece of art during the time of Évora's cultural and political golden age.

The Royal Palace of Évora has its origins in the Convent and College of São Francisco, built before the reign of King Afonso IV. The convent's first royal function was in 1336, when Prince Pedro of Portugal celebrated his divorce of Constanza Manuel, which put the convent on royal notice.

In 1387, King John I took the first step in transforming the convent to a palace, when he ordered that two chambers, and antechamber, an inn, servants houses, a well, and an orange grove all be built at the convent, and evicted resident Franciscans from certain wings of the convent turned palace. While he turned the convent into a good sized palace, it was a personal palace, not a royal one, only for the use of the King, his Queen, and their children.

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