Lisbon - Igreja de Sao Vicente de Fora

The Igreja de Sao Vicente de Fora, together with the adjoining former Augustinian monastery (now closed), stands on a hill to the east of Alfama and is visible from afar. The Largo das Potas de Sol, on the edge of Alfama and where a memorial to St Vincent was erected in 1970, offers a fine view of the church in the distance. From here the additional name de Fora (outside), referring to its position, can be appreciated; at the time of its construction, the church stood outside of the city walls.

Several partly contradictory legends have grown up about the life of St Vincent to whom the church is dedicated. Both Portugal and Spain lay claim to the saint. Confusion reigns mostly about his burial site; one claim holds it to be in Avila in Spain in a church named after him, another points to St Vincent's mother of pearl encrusted reliquary in Lisbon's Sé Patriarchal, which used to be kept in a former church on the site of Sao Vicente de Fora. He is commonly considered to be a Spanish saint, but is also held to be a Portuguese one. In Portugal he is the patron saint of sea voyages and of viniculture, and the people of Lisbon have recorded his life in the coat of arms of their city. According to Portuguese tradition, during the fourth C. the body of St Vincent was washed ashore at Sagres in the Algarve in one of two ships accompanied by ravens (Cabo de Sao Vicente is thus the name of the most southwesterly rocky plateau near to Sagres). In the 12th C. Afonso Henriques had his remains transported to one of the churches commissioned by him on the site of the present Sao Vicente de Fora.

The building of the Igreja de Sao Vicente de Fora was ordered by the Spanish king Philipp II in 1590. Philipp II had the previous 12th C. church on this site torn down and asked the Italian architect Filippo Terzi to design a new church. In his plans Terzi focused on the II Gesù in Rome. The building style evident in the Sao Vicente de Fora belongs to the end of the Renaissance. Although the church continued to be built up until the beginning of the 18th C. (the main work being completed by 1629, however), as a whole it appears extraordinarily uniform.

The strongly symmetrical facade is flanked by two towers. Above three great portals can be seen three niches with portrayals of St Sebastian, St Augustine and St Vincent and above them are three windows with triangular and segment pediments.