Capela Carlos Alberto: Igreja Luterana do Porto, Porto

Behind this chapel is Portugal’s largest Romantic cenotaph, built to honour a king whose final exile ended in Porto. Carlos Alberto, King of Piedmont-Sardinia, arrived here in 1849 after Austrian forces defeated him at the Battle of Novara. He had hoped to unite Italy under his rule, but abdicated and left his kingdom; he died later that same year at Quinta da Macieirinha, now the Romantic Museum.

His body went on to Turin, while this memorial rose near the estate at the request of his half-sister, Princess Augusta de Montléart. The building took almost six years to complete, and its interior received three sculptures bought in Paris. Its first Mass was celebrated on Christmas Day in 1861.

In time, the Crystal Palace Gardens grew around it, turning a monument of political defeat and family remembrance into part of Porto’s garden landscape. Look over the chapel’s decorative exterior: it still carries the theatrical, emotional language of nineteenth-century Romanticism. Today it belongs to Porto’s municipality and serves the Holy Trinity Parish of the Lutheran Church of Portugal.