ordia took Diogo de Torralva's cloister at Thomar as his
model.

It was in the year 1590 that Cardinal Affonso de Castello Branco began
to build the headquarters of the Misericordia of Coimbra, founded in
1500 as a simple confraternity. The various offices of the institution,
including a church, the halls whose ceilings have been already
mentioned, and hospital dormitories--all now turned into an
orphanage--are built round two courtyards, one only of which calls for
special notice, for nearly everything else has been rebuilt or altered.
In this court or cloister, the plan of the Claustro dos Filippes has
been followed in that there are three wide arches on each side, and
between them--but not in the corners, and further apart than at
Thomar--a pair of columns. In this case the space occupied by one arch
is scarcely wider than that occupied by the two fluted Doric columns and
the square-headed openings between them. Another change is that the
complete entablature with triglyphs and metopes is only found above the
columns, for the arches rise too high to leave room for more than the
cornice. (Fig. 96.)

The upper story is quite different, for it has only square-headed
windows, though the line of the columns is carried up by slender and
short Ionic columns; a sloping tile roof rests immediately on the upper
cornice, above which rise small obelisks placed over the columns.

[Sidenote: Coimbra, Episcopal Palace.]

At about the same time the Cardinal built a long loggia on the west side
of the entrance court of his palace at Coimbra. The hill on which the
palace is built being extremely

[Illustration: FIG. 95.

SE NOVA, COIMBRA.]

[Illustration: FIG. 96

COIMBRA.

MISERICORDIA.]

steep, an immense retaining wall, some fifty or sixty feet high, bounds
the courtyard on the west, and it is on the top of this wall that the
loggia is built forming a covered way two stories in height and uniting
the Manoelino palace on the north with some offices which bound the yard
on the south. This covered way is formed by two rows of seven arches,
each resting on Doric columns, with a balustrading between the outer
columns on the top of the great wall. The ceiling is of wood and forms
the floor of the upper story, where the columns are Ionic and support a
continuous architrave. The whole is quite simple and unadorned, but at
the same time singularly picturesque, since the view through the arches,
over the old cathedral and the s