Évora

Évora's great age came under the Avis kings, above all Manuel I and John III, who kept their court here for long stretches; Gil Vicente, the father of Portuguese drama, worked among their courtiers, and sculptors, painters and humanist scholars followed the court to the city. In 1540 the see became an archbishopric, and its first archbishop, the Cardinal-Infante Henry, founded a university and gave it to the Jesuits, where the theologian Luis de Molina taught. The city's fortunes were tied to that school. When the Marquis of Pombal expelled the Jesuits, the university was closed in 1759, and Évora sank into a long provincial decline.