The skull walls
The complete 1816 ordering.
Kjell Vikanes — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Dmitry Tonkonog — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Marc Ryckaert (MJJR) — CC BY 3.0 · Matt Kieffer from London, United Kingdom — CC BY-SA 2.0
Theological graveyard logistics: small cemeteries were periodically cleared, remains translated — and the orders turned translation into an architectural sermon on mortality (memento mori) rather than closed ossuaries. It is doubled reverence, not mockery: remains displayed as reminder, prayer invited.
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Faro's Carmo is the Algarve's completest golden baroque: a yellow twin-towered front commanding its square — inside, Brazil's gold: carved gilt altars funded by the Brazilian gold fever (18th century) when Portugal ladled from the Minas mines. Its fame lives in the back yard: the Bone Chapel (1816), built by the Carmelites from the remains of 1,245 friars their overfilled cemetery yielded — walls and ceiling of skulls and bones ordered as complete ornament, and over the door the famous reminder: "Stop here and think: this fate awaits you." It is famous Évora's chapel in miniature and truer quiet — ten minutes' walk north of the old town: Faro's trio (old town, cathedral, Carmo) one completed morning.
The complete 1816 ordering.
The Minas fever in carved gold.
Largo do Carmo, 8000-148 Faro