Now the walls are bare and white, but were once covered with frescoes of the fifteenth century; the reredos is a clumsy addition of the eighteenth century.
The cornice and the long pilasters at the entrance to the chancel seem to have been added at the same time, but the windows and ceiling are still those of Dom João's time. The windows--there are now three, a fourth in the chancel having been turned into a royal pew--are of two or three lights, have commonplace tracery, and are only interesting as being one of the few wholly Gothic features in the palace.
Far more interesting is the ceiling, which is entirely Arab in construction and in design. In the nave it is an irregular polygon in section, and in the chancel is nearly a semicircle, having nine equal sides. The whole of the boarded surface is entirely covered with an intricate design formed of strips of wood crossing each other in every direction so as to form stars, triangles, octagons, and figures of every conceivable shape. The whole still retains its original colouring. At the centres of the main figures are gilt bosses--the one over the high altar being a shield with the royal arms--the wooden strips are black with a white groove down the centre of each, and the ground is either dark red or light blue. (Fig. 46.)
The whole is of great interest not only for its own sake, but because it is the only ceiling in the palace which has remained unchanged since the end of the fourteenth century, and because it is, as it were, the parent of the splendid roofs in the Sala dos Cysnes and of the still more wonderful one in the Sala dos Escudos.
The kitchen lies at the back of the chapel and at right angles to it. It is a building about 58 feet long by 25 wide, and is divided into two equal parts by a large arch. Each of these two parts is covered by a huge conical chimney so that the inside is more like the nave of St. Ours at Loches than anything else, while outside these chimneys rise high above all the rest of the palace. It is lit by small two-light Gothic windows, and has lately been lined with white tiles. Now the
chimneys serve only as ventilators, as ordinary iron ranges have been put in. There seems to be nothing in the country at all like these chimneys--for the kitchen at Alcobaça, although it has a stream running through it, is but a poor affair compared with this one, nor is its chimney in any way remarkable outside.[96]