[Illustration: PLAN OF NOSSA SENHORA DO PILAR]
Now the eucalyptus-trees planted round the church have grown so tall that only the parapet can be seen rising above the tree-tops.
Though much of the detail of the outside is far from being classical or correct, the whole is well proportioned and well put together, but the same cannot be said of the inside. Pilasters of inordinate height have been seen in some of the Lisbon churches, but compared with these which here stand in couples between the chapels they are short and well proportioned. These pilasters, which are quite seventeen diameters high, have for capitals coarse copies of those in São Vicente de Fora in Lisbon. In São Vicente the cornice was carried on corbels crossing the frieze, and so was continuous and unbroken. Here all the lower mouldings of the cornice are carried round the corbels and the pilasters so that only the two upper are continuous, an arrangement which is anything but an improvement. Another unpleasing feature are the three niches which, with hideous painted figures, are placed one above the other between the pilasters. The chancel arch reaches up to the main cornice, but those of the door and chapel recesses are low enough to leave room for the windows. The dome is divided into panels of various shapes by broad flat ribs with coarse mouldings. The chancel and choir beyond have barrel vaults divided into simple square panels.
The church then, though interesting from its plan, is--inside especially--remarkably unpleasing, though it is perhaps only fair to attribute a considerable part of this disagreeable effect to the state of decay into which it has fallen--a state which has only advanced far enough to be squalid and dirty without being in the least picturesque. Far more pleasing than the church is the round cloister behind. In it the thirty-six Ionic columns are much better proportioned, and the capitals better carved; on the cornice stands an attic, rendered necessary by the barrel vault, heavy indeed, but not too heavy for the columns below. This attic is panelled, and on it stand obelisk-bearing pedestals, one above each column, and between them pediments of strapwork. (Fig. 98.)
Had this cloister been square it would have been in no way very remarkable, but its round shape as well as the fig-trees that now grow in the garth, and the many plants which sprout from joints in the cornice, make it one of the most picturesque buildings in the country. The rest of the monastic buildings have been in ruins since the siege of 1832.