A new hotel has been opened at Evora, in the Province of Alemtejo, in Portugal, which has been built on the site of the old Inquision Palace.
It was at Evora, then the capital of Portugal, that the Inquisition of Portugal was first established in 1536, in the reign of John III, the Fanatic. One of the first to be brought to the stake there was David Reubeni.
There were three offices of the Inquisition in Portugal-one at Lisbon, one at Evora, and the third at Coimbra-and there was a fourth at Goa, in South America. Only the Palace of Evora remained intact to the present day.
When the Inquisition was abolished in Portugal by the Constituent Assembly in 1821, the mob invaded these palaces and destroyed the instruments of torture. A large part of the archives and records of the proceedings were saved, however, and 40,000 of these records of Inquisitorial trials are preserved in the National Library (Torre do Tombo) at Lisbon.
The Inquisition Palace at Lisbon fell into ruin in 1755 in the earthquake which destroyed practically the entire city. On its site now stands the National Theatre.
In Coimbra not even the site has been preserved, but in Evora the Palace came into the possession of a Portuguese family which kept it intact and closed to all curious eyes. Recently, on the death of the last member of this family, Madame Marie Cristina de Lemos Vieira, the Inquisition Palace of Evora was acquired by a group of financiers, who built a tourist hotel on the site called the Hotel Alemtejo. The correspondent has paid a visit to the building, which has not suffered much change by its conversion into a hotel. The dungeons and torture room of the Inquisition are still to be seen, and it is even possible to distinguish the inscriptions made on the walls by the prisoners with their blood. There is also the Great Judgment Hall with the emblem of the Inquisition on the ceiling, a cross placed between a sword and an olive branch, and the Inquisition Chapel dating to 1721.
Mrs. Esther Solomon, active in Jewish charitable work in Baltimore for many years, died Friday at Tel Aviv, relatives learned. She was seventy-six years old.
Mrs. Solomon went to Tel Aviv in 1922.
Milton. C. Oppenheimer, Woodmere, L. I., was elected a member of the school board. He is the first Jew elected to the board. He was opposed by the Klan.
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