Situated on the eastern side of Praça 1 de Maio, the Igreja de São Francisco contains perhaps the most memorable monument in Évora – the Capela dos Ossos (Chapel of Bones; Mon-Sat 9am–12.45pm & 2.30–5.45pm, Sun 10am–12.45pm & 2.30–5.45pm; €1). A timeless and gruesome memorial to the mortality of man, the walls and pillars of this chilling chamber are entirely constructed from the bones of more than 5000 monks. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there were 42 monastic cemeteries in town which took up much-needed space. The Franciscans' neat solution was to move all the remains to one compact, consecrated site. There's a grim humour in the ordered, artfully planned arrangement of skulls, tibias and vertebrae around the vaults, and in the rhyming inscription over the door which reads Nós ossos que aqui estamos pelos vossos esperamos (We bones here are waiting for your bones).

Praça 1 de Maio itself has been remodelled along with its Mercado Municipal (closed Mon), and several cafés and restaurants put out tables in the square. There are also farmers' and craft markets held here most weekends. A block away, off Rua da República, you might as well nip around the corner to see the exterior of the mid-sixteenth-century Igreja Nossa Senhora da Graça. At each of the corners of its Renaissance pediment, grotesque Atlas-giants support two globes – the emblem of Dom Manuel and his burgeoning overseas empire.

Dom Manuel's palace stood just to the south, its reconstructed gallery – incorporating inventive horseshoe arches with strange serrated edges – now forming part of the Jardim Público, at the foot of Praça 1 de Maio. It was from here, historians believe, that Vasco da Gama received the commission that changed the direction of the Portuguese empire, as the explorer established the sea route to India. The resultant wealth found its expression in the flamboyant style of architecture known as Manueline – after the king – and an echo of this can be seen from the garden walls, which look out over the southern edge of the city. The Ermida de São Brás, visible just outside the city walls on the road to the train station, has been identified as an early work by Diogo de Boitaca, pioneer of the Manueline style. Its tubular, dunce-capped buttresses and crenellated roofline bear scant resemblance to his masterpieces at Lisbon and Setúbal, but they certainly foreshadow the style's uninhibited originality.