Alentejo
Évora is the argument for small. The whole historic centre is inside a wall, and from the Roman temple to the cathedral to the Praça do Giraldo to the aqueduct is a walk rather than a logistics exercise. A ninety-minute session here covers more distinct backdrops than three hours in Lisbon, because none of the time goes into moving between them. What it costs is shade. The Alentejo is the hottest part of the country and the streets are narrow and white, which means from June to September the middle of the day is not merely uncomfortable, it is unusable — the contrast between a lime wall in sun and the same wall in shadow is beyond what any sensor holds. The compensation is that the light at either end of the day is the cleanest in Portugal.
April, May and October are the months. In high summer a session starts at seven or at eight in the evening and nothing in between is worth doing; forty degrees in the shade is a normal July afternoon here. Winter is cold at night, bright in the day and completely empty, and the cork oaks and the plain around the town are green from December to April rather than in summer, which is the opposite of what most visitors expect.
Here is where to shoot in Évora, with ideal times and permit notes.
Fourteen Corinthian columns on a rise at the top of the town, with nothing built against them. It is lit from behind at sunrise, which makes it a silhouette, and lit from the front at the end of the day.
Arcades down two sides and a marble fountain in the middle, which is the one piece of open shade in the centre. It is also the town’s meeting place, so it is a location that changes completely between eight and ten.
A sixteenth-century aqueduct that the town simply built into: houses sit inside the arches, on a normal street with cars on it. It is the most photographed thing in Évora that no one arrives intending to photograph.
The roof of the cathedral, looking over the tiled roofs of the whole walled town to the plain beyond. The one elevated view, and the only paid location in the centre.
These come under the Évora rate: a photographer travels out from the city at no extra charge, and the session is priced exactly as it would be in Évora itself.
Ninety minutes covers the temple, the square, the cathedral and the aqueduct on foot, with time to stop. That is unusual — in most cities that list would be a half day and two taxis.
Forty degrees in the shade is a normal July afternoon. It is not a matter of preference: between about eleven and six there is no session here that produces anything, so the booking is at either end of the day or in another month.