Another wonderful and bizarre element in the Seminário is the four-way crossing which splits the base circle into four “lakes”. With no other function than to delight (in fact it was probably made to be seen while you circled around inside your coach) it has an allegorical statue on each of the corners atop a pyramidal base.
The vocabulary is borrowed from the main building, but the realization didn’t happen until much later, in the middle of the 19th c., and already by Portuguese hands. It is entirely fitting in the fantastical style of the complex though, and wonderfully whimsical in its own way.
Coimbra, Seminário Maior.
