Porto's buildings faced in azulejos

Map of 8 locations in Porto, Portugal

Porto's tiled fronts are mostly newer than the buildings behind them. A 1739 church received its 11,000 tiles in 1932, a chapel on Santa Catarina got its tiled covering in 1929, and a riverside parish church still has no national classification. The list follows those dates, from an 1861 façade near the Ribeira to Jorge Colaço's twentieth-century commissions, and ends at a grocery that used tiles as advertising.

Places in this collection

  • A Pérola do Bolhão — This is a grocery, not a church. It has traded here since 1917 behind an Art Nouveau tiled front that was designed to draw customers in fro…
  • Igreja do Corpo Santo de Massarelos — Work on the present church began in 1776 in Massarelos, a riverside parish closely tied to the Douro's sailors and maritime confraternities…
  • Igreja de São Nicolau — The façade was covered in azulejos in 1861, half a century before the large figurative panels at Carmo and Santo Ildefonso, so it belongs t…
  • Capela de Fradelos — This small neoclassical chapel, also called Nossa Senhora da Boa Hora, opened in 1893. It has blue-and-white azulejos by Jorge Colaço on it…
  • Igreja de Santo António dos Congregados — The church dates from around the turn of the eighteenth century and stands near São Bento station. Its exterior tile panels, showing the li…
  • Capela das Almas — The chapel is older than its tiles. The panels wrapping its façades on Rua de Santa Catarina and Rua Fernandes Tomás were designed by Eduar…
  • Estação de São Bento — The city museum names the station's tiled walls and the façade of Santo Ildefonso as Jorge Colaço's two best-known works in Porto. The chur…
  • Igreja de Santo Ildefonso — The church was built between 1709 and 1739, but the tiles on its front came two centuries later: about 11,000 azulejos by Jorge Colaço, put…

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