Azulejos na Capela das almas, Porto

These tiled walls belong to the Chapel of Souls, also called Santa Catarina, on Rua de Santa Catarina. Its blue exterior tilework dates from nineteen twenty-nine; fifteen thousand nine hundred and forty-seven tiles spread across about three hundred and sixty square metres of wall. Eduardo Leite created the designs, while a Lisbon ceramic factory produced the pieces.

Along the façade, the scenes recount episodes from Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Catherine, whose worship shapes this chapel’s identity. The repeated glazed squares transform sacred narratives into a vast public picture. The building now here grew from an earlier timber shrine for Saint Catherine, and construction began late in the eighteenth century after a Franciscan brotherhood relocated here from Santa Clara.