Journey to Portugal by José Saramago

The traveller came to know little more than the upper town in Estremoz, where the old town and castle are enclosed. The roads within the city walls are narrow. From there on down the area opens out, less into a town than into a city. Estremoz stretches forth so far it almost loses sight of its origins, while still encircling the celebrated Torre das Tres Coroas [the Tower of Three Garlands] with its obvious attractions. Nowhere else has the traveller so strongly experienced the demarcation that can be made by city walls between those within and those without. Of course, the impression made can only be a personal one, thus subject to a caution which naturally the traveller lacks.

Whitewashed with chalk, employing marble as if it were an everyday stone, the houses in the upper city are of themselves reason enough to visit Estremoz. But on its summit is also the aforementioned tower, with its decorative balconied battlements, along with the remains of King Dinis' Palace and its portals of twinned colonnades where the traveller discovered pictures of the moon and of lambs. Here too is the eighteenth-century chapel to the saintly Queen Isabel, with its theatrical choir stalls and extravagantly ornamented tiles representing stages in the life of the miraculous lady who transformed bread into roses, since she was unable to transform roses into bread. Here too the Municipal Museum, which boasts much to see and little to forget.