TWO HOURS BY TRAIN from the capi-
tal in Lisbon and midway to Porto in the
country’s northern quarter, Coimbra is
home to Portugal’s oldest university. The
main campus sits proudly above the scaf-
fold of terra-cotta rooftops and winding,
cobbled streets of the old town where
you’ll find the material relics of the city’s
history, dating back to Roman times.
Often, at night, the praças fill with stu-
dents, whose chants preserve the cultural
heritage of Coimbra as securely as stone,
its tradition of song as strong as that of the
written word.
Visitors to the city are irresistibly drawn
up the hill by the Biblioteca Joanina, which
sits beneath “A Cabra,” the university clock
tower. A baroque masterpiece of gilt and
painted wood, the eighteenth-century
library houses thousands of volumes that,
despite an ongoing digitization effort,
remain unique to its shelves, accessible
only to those with objects of study arcane
enough to pass a requisition slip through
the librarians’ scrutiny. At night, a colonyof bats patrols, snapping up insects looking
to snack on the margins of the country’s
literary heritage. Whether or not you’re
liable to believe the claims that the grand
library of Beauty and the Beast took some
inspiration from the site, no visit to the city
would be quite complete without a glimpse
of this landmark.
On your way there, though, perhaps
on the steps of the Old Cathedral, you’ll
find groups of students caped in the tra-
ditional academic uniform singing and
playing in tunas, carrying on the city’s
musical legacy and earning a few coins for
their colleges’ year-end celebration. Should
you happen to get lost down a side street
(easily done), you might even find yourself
in front of one of the ramshackle torch-
bearers of Coimbra’s university traditions:
the Repúblicas, houses of student convivi-
ality, each with its own ad hoc library, its
own eccentric practices, and its own part
in Portugal’s artistic and political history.
It was in a República that a young,
despondent Agostinho Neto began his firstbook of poetry, A Renúncia Impossível, lit-
tle guessing he would someday lead Angola
into independence as its first president. In
the twilight years of Salazar’s dictatorship,
the revolutionary songwriters Zeca Afonso
and Adriano Correia de Oliveira dined,
drank, and played in Repúblicas. Histories
oral, written, and sung pile up in these com-
munal libraries and living rooms. Their
walls, thoroughly scrawled, are palimpsests
of all (all) that passes through, poems and
quotes from past members keeping com-
pany with evolving memes and explicit
jokes. An off-brand Sharpie sits ever at the
ready, underlining the message that what
is produced here is valued, whether for a
laugh or a moment of inspiration.
As for tickets and requisition slips, a
knock on the door or a shout up to an open
window generally does the trick. You’ll
find out fast that there’s no gilding here—
just layers of paint.Grant Schatzman is a writer, editor, and
educator originally from Oklahoma City.PHOTO: SERGE LAROCHE/FLICKROutpost
The Literary Storehouses of Coimbra, Portugal
by Grant Schatzman
112 W LT SUMMER 2019