Journey to Portugal by José Saramago

The prima donna assoluta is the opera singer who only sings the principal roles, whose name is always first on the billboards. In general, she is capricious, impulsive, fickle. The traveller hopes that this absolute spring which has come early will not have the same defects, or will only show them later. On the plus side, he has already enjoyed two bright, magnificent days, the day before and this one. He descends the valley that begins on the outskirts of Guarda heading south, then follows the River Gaia. It is a rolling landscape, with farmland that is already showing green: the winter is really over.

Near Belmonte stands the Centum Cellas or Centum Coeli, the most mysterious monument in all these Portuguese lands. Nobody knows what this twenty-metre-high structure was originally: some maintain it was a temple, others that it was a prison, or an inn, a belltower, or a watchtower. There seems to be no reason for an inn here; if it were a watchtower it need not have been so elaborate; it could only have been a prison of very advanced ideas, because the windows and doors are so large; it might have been a temple; the problem is that we are always quick to put that label on anything we come across. The traveller feels that the answer must lie in the land around the monument: it is scarcely credible that it should have been built on its own, as a whim. So the reply probably lies under the ploughed fields, but unless it is possible to guarantee a serious, methodical excavation, with sufficient money and protection, it is better to leave Centum Cellas in peace.