Isabel of Aragão died on 4 July 1336, and Coimbra has not stopped marking it. She is the Rainha Santa — the Queen Saint — and her body lies in a silver-and-crystal urn at Santa Clara-a-Nova, the hilltop monastery the Poor Clares fled to when the Mondego finally drove them out of the old house below.
Every second July the urn comes down into the city. This page exists mostly to get one fact straight, because the guides do not: the great processions run in even-numbered years, not odd ones. The 2026 edition has just passed. The next is 2028.
The even-year rule, and why guides get it wrong
Two things run under one banner. The Festas da Cidade — the secular city festival — happen every year, even and odd. The religious festivities with the great processions happen biennially, in even-numbered years.
In the odd years the city keeps other traditions instead, notably the Casamentos da Rainha Santa, the Queen Saint’s Weddings, which Coimbra revived in recent years.
Here is the source of the confusion. 2025 — an odd year — did have processions, held on 10 and 13 July. They were a one-off, for the 400th anniversary of the canonisation and 700 years of pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. The president of the Confraria said so in as many words: a special celebration “apesar de ser um ano ímpar” — despite being an odd year. That phrase only makes sense if odd years are normally the off years.
Anyone reading 2025 as the pattern concluded the opposite, and published it. If you see “odd years” anywhere, that is where it came from.
What the 2026 programme looked like
The religious festivities ran 1–12 July 2026, and the shape is consistent enough to plan 2028 around, in broad terms:
- 1–3 July — the triduum, with preaching at 21:30 by the Bishop of Viana do Castelo.
- 4 July — the feast day and Coimbra’s municipal holiday, with the Eucharist at 11:00 presided by the Bishop of Coimbra.
- 9 July — the public procession at 18:00.
- 12 July — the closing Mass and the return procession at 16:00.
The underlying pattern is that the first procession, the Procissão da Penitência, falls on a Thursday, typically the one following 4 July, with the solemn procession three days later on the Sunday.
2028 dates are not published and will not be for some time. Treat the above as the shape, not the schedule.
What 4 July closes
A municipal holiday in Portugal is a closing day. This is the practical warning, and it catches visitors who assume a feast day means extra opening.
4 July appears on the annual closure lists of the state monuments in Coimbra, alongside 1 January, Easter Sunday, 1 May and 25 December — both the Machado de Castro museum and Santa Clara-a-Velha list it, for whenever they reopen from their current closures. Assume the municipal museum network is shut too, since it closes on public holidays.
What stays open: the university circuit, whose published closure list for this cycle does not include 4 July, and the free Botanical Garden. See the July guide for the full picture of that week.
Where to go, and the two tombs
The destination is Santa Clara-a-Nova, up the Calçada de Santa Isabel on the left bank. Visits run 08:30–18:30 in summer and 08:30–17:00 in winter, with no visits during services — liturgy Thursdays 18:00, Saturdays 16:30, Sundays 11:00.
Admission is 6.00 EUR, 3.00 EUR for groups of six or more and for ages 12–18, and free under 12. A guided visit is a flat 10.00 EUR on top of entry whatever the group size, booked ahead. The site describes the charge formally as a donation toward the monastery’s upkeep. No flash inside.
The detail worth the climb: there are two tombs of the same queen in the same building. The silver-and-crystal urn holding her incorrupt body sits in the main chapel’s retable. Down in the coro baixo is her original Gothic stone tomb, carved by Mestre Pero in 1330 — which the nuns dragged up the hill with them when the floods won. She was rehoused twice: once in stone, once in silver.
Her first foundation, Santa Clara-a-Velha on the flood plain below, is closed for works and has been since October 2025.