Once, while São Vicente was still a monastery, this room was the refectory of the monks. Today (and in its current design since 1933) it is the Panteão da Dinastia de Bragança, a pantheon, which tells us something about the self-perception of kings 🙂
The most impressive thing in the room is the statue of a weeping woman, symbolizing the country in mourning for a murdered king and his son, both victims of the Regicice of 1908.
Now that I look at the images in Wikipedia, I recognize that my Image of the Day is far less original than I would have thought, but that is the problem with photographing in iconic places. Ask someone returning from Yellowstone 😄
In the end I don’t care. Had I looked into Wikipedia (or Google’s image search) before the visit, I could have concentrated on finding a truly unique view.
Who knows, maybe something like that really exists and it does not force you to climb the tombs (and consequently spend a night in jail, I guess). But even if, for a first visit I much prefer to come as a naive visitor, to see with the eyes of the uninitiated. In other words, to trade in the joy of surprise for a better image does not sound like a good deal. I’d rather come back another time.