Queen’s Chapel

The so-called "Chapel of D. Leonor", also known as the "Arab Room", corresponds most probably to one of the few spaces of the primitive convent founded in 1509 that we can still see today. Hence, the added importance of this "chapel", a square-shaped room whose most revealing feature is its alfarge ceiling. Testifying to the echoes kept alive of the Arab presence on the Iberian Peninsula works such as this one show the extreme mastery of the carpentry work that marked Mudejar architecture in Portugal, particularly during the reign of D. Manuel I (r.1495-1521). According to the reports written by the Madre de Deus nuns in the 17th century, the presence of a rope, interpreted by the queen as being that of St. Francis, which surrounds the many stars "woven" into the ceiling of what had been a private chapel predating the convent, would have been decisive in the choice of this site as the home of the female branch of the Franciscans – the Poor Clares, the religious order that D. Leonor had already chosen for the institution she wished to build. Of the vast collection of works of art gathered in the original convent note those that originated in workshops in northern and central Europe. The "Panorama of Jerusalem" is one of the few works that remained on this site.