page_title: Portuguese Romanesque architecture
section_title: Interiors
hierarchical_section_title: Portuguese Romanesque architecture / Churches and monasteries / Interiors
caption_attribution_description: Iglesia de Sanfins de Friestas
context_page_description: The Romanesque style of architecture was introduced in Portugal between the end of the 11th and the beginning of the 12th century. In general, Portuguese cathedrals have a heavy, fortress-like appearance, with crenellations and few decorative elements apart from portals and windows. Portuguese Romanesque cathedrals were later extensively modified, among others the Old Cathedral of Coimbra, although it only had some minor changes.
  Chronological and geographical distribution of Romanesque buildings in Portugal are intimately connected with the territorial organization emerging from the Reconquista, being the fundamental reason for the differences between a locally influenced artistical phenomenon in the North of the country and a more "international" kind in buildings like Coimbra and Lisbon cathedrals. Romanesque architecture first developed in Minho and Douro regions spreading later southwards to Coimbra. It is in the rural areas of the northwest and center regions that Romanesque buildings are more concentrated, being more dense in the margins of rivers Douro and Mondego.
context_section_description: Most Romanesque monasteries, parish churches and abbey churches in Portugal are aisless halls with a projecting apse at the chancel end, or sometimes, a projecting rectangular chancel with a chancel arch that might be decorated with mouldings. More ambitious churches have aisles separated from the nave by arcades. The apse is lower or at the same height of the nave. Monasteries are usually larger with 3 aisles supported by decorated columns and piers. The walls are of massive thickness with few and comparatively small openings and almost entirely made out of granite stones.
  Arcades can occur in storeys or stages. While the arcade of a cloister is typically of a single stage, the arcade that divides the nave and aisles in a church is typically of two stages, with a third stage of window openings known as the clerestory rising above them. Arcading on a large scale generally fulfils a structural purpose, but it is also used, generally on a smaller scale, as a decorative feature, both internally and externally where it is frequently "blind arcading" with only a wall or a narrow passage behind it.
  The arches used in Portuguese Romanesque buildings follow the basic European model and are nearly always semicircular, for openings such as doors and windows, for vaults and for arcades. Wide doorways are usually surmounted by a semi-circular arch, except where a door with a lintel is set into a large arched recess and surmounted by a semi-circular lunette with decorative carving. These doors sometimes have a carved central jamb.
  Narrow doors and small windows might be surmounted by a solid stone lintel. Larger openings are nearly always arched. A characteristic feature of Portuguese Romanesque architecture, both ecclesiastic and domestic, is the pairing of two arcade openings, separated by a pillar or colonette and often set within a larger arch. There were some number of buildings in which pointed arches have been used extensively, apparently for stylistic reasons and it is believed that in these cases there is a direct influence of Mozarabic and/or Islamic architecture. At other late Romanesque churches the pointed arch was introduced as a structural device in ribbed vaulting. Its increasing application was fundamental to the development of Gothic architecture.
  Although basically rectangular, piers can often be of highly complex form, with half-segments of large hollow-core columns on the inner surface supporting the arch, or a clustered group of smaller shafts leading into the mouldings of the arch.
  Piers that occur at the intersection of two large arches, such as those under the crossing of the nave and transept, are commonly cruciform in shape, each arch having its own supporting rectangular pier at right angles to the other.
  Columns, colonnettes and attached shafts are also used structurally and for decoration. Arcades of columns cut from single pieces are also common in structures that do not bear massive weights of masonry, such as cloisters, where they are sometimes paired.
  The majority of buildings have wooden roofs, generally of a simple truss, tie beam or king post form. In the case of trussed rafter roofs, they are sometimes lined with wooden ceilings in three sections like those that survive at the monasteries of Rates or Paço de Sousa. Some others are completely barrel vaulted or a mix between wooden roofs and a vaulted apse. In later stages rib vaulting started to be used as an experiment in main altar roofs.
caption: Interior of the church of São Pedro de Ferreira Monastery with small openings and carved capitals.
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