Capela Carlos Alberto: Igreja Luterana do Porto, Porto

What makes this small chapel unusual is that it is not a burial place at all: it is Portugal’s largest Romantic cenotaph, a memorial built without a tomb. Princess Augusta de Montléart commissioned it for her half-brother, Charles Albert, king of Piedmont-Sardinia. His Porto exile gives the monument its force.

After defeat by Austrian forces at Novara in 1849, he surrendered his crown and came to Porto. He first stayed at an inn in the Balsemão viscounts’ palace, on the square now bearing his name, then moved to Quinta da Macieirinha, where he died that same year. His remains went to Turin; this chapel rose near the estate in remembrance.

Construction took almost six years, and its first Mass was celebrated on Christmas Day 1861. The chapel later belonged to the House of Braganza until Queen Amélia, then living in exile, gave it to Porto’s city council in 1950. Today the municipality still owns it, while Portugal’s Lutheran Church uses it for the Holy Trinity parish’s services. From where you are standing, let its setting among the Crystal Palace gardens add a quiet contrast: a monument to an Italian king, kept alive as a working place of worship in Porto.