Guided Tour

A thousand years is the age of São Geraldo's chalice. A silver piece ordered by D. Afonso Henriques' great-great-great-grandfather to drink with meals. Belonging to the Museu da Sé de Braga, the São Geraldo chalice was made 150 years before the foundation of Portugal and one hundred years before the construction of the Sé de Braga, at the dawn of the reconquest. The chalice of São Geraldo is the oldest testimony in jewelery of how Arab culture is inscribed in the DNA of Iberian Christians.

The Cross of D. Sancho I proves how the first kings of Portugal, contrary to what was conveyed for centuries, were sophisticated and elegant men. Despite the incredible vicissitudes it went through, the Cross of D. Sancho I went through 800 years (almost) unscathed. And it is a testament to the invention of the cross as the main Christian icon.

The treasure of Queen Saint Isabel and her tomb are precious works of European medieval art. And they tell us other stories about the famous wife of D.Dinis. A charitable queen, yes, but also very connected to power and politics. The miracle of the roses was initially attributed to one of her aunts and only entered the roster of miracles of Queen Isabel of Portugal centuries after she had died.

The nativity triptych is a rarity of European medieval art. A portable altar, in silver and gilded silver, with 1.30m in height by 1.50m in width. The nativity triptych is shrouded in mystery: was it ordered by D. João I of Portugal after the victory of Aljubarrota, where the Portuguese defeated the Spanish in just half an hour and with a third of the men, or did it belong to D. João I of León and Castile who left it behind in the flight from the Battle?

The first Indian in the history of Western art is Portuguese. Grão Vasco and his collaborators painted him on the panels of the altarpiece of the Sé de Viseu. A surprising fact: the Portuguese arrived in Brazil in 1500 and these panels began to be painted in 1501. Did Grão Vasco have access to the descriptions of the Indians of Brazil from the letter of Pêro Vaz de Caminha? A fantastic period that transformed European life and imagination.

The main cloister of the Convent of Christ is referenced in the history of universal art as one of the most beautiful examples of European Renaissance architecture. But this cloister is more than a treasure of Renaissance art, it is the construction that buries the Middle Ages in Portugal once and for all and aligns it with the new European humanism.