Évora was Roman, Moorish, then Portuguese, and the centre of the city is a three-layered cake of all of them. The walled historic centre, a UNESCO site since 1986, is small enough to cross on foot in ten minutes, but it holds a Roman temple, a Gothic cathedral, a Renaissance aqueduct and a chapel decorated with human bones.
The temple, often called the Temple of Diana though nobody knows to whom it was dedicated, stands on a raised platform with its Corinthian columns still upright, built in the first century and preserved because it was used as a slaughterhouse and walled in for centuries. A few steps away, the cathedral's heavy granite towers recall a fortress, and from its roof you can see rooftops of white and orange stretching out to the plain. Then there is the Chapel of Bones, in the church of São Francisco, where Franciscan monks lined the walls with the skulls and bones of about five thousand people, with a warning above the door that reminds visitors of how little time they have.
Évora also had a university, founded in 1559 by the Jesuits and later closed by the Marquis of Pombal, which gave the city a scholarly air still visible in the cloisters and the students' cafés. And at the edge of the old town, the arches of the Água de Prata aqueduct, built in the sixteenth century, march across the fields and, in places, have houses and shops built into them.
For motorcyclists, the old centre is a delight on foot and a pain on wheels. The streets are narrow, paved with granite setts that become slippery in rain, with one-way systems and limited parking. Leave the bike in a car park outside the walls and walk in. Fuel and everything else are available in the newer parts of the city, and the roads to the surrounding villages are quiet and fast.
Évora is a place for long lunches and slow afternoons, and the sunsets over the walls, with storks circling over the aqueduct, are worth waiting for.