Igreja de Santo Ildefonso, Porto

Igreja de Santo Ildefonso rises beside Batalha Square as a granite church whose façade carries an extraordinary skin of painted ceramic panels. Completed in seventeen thirty-nine, it replaced an older chapel on this site that had become dangerously unstable. Let your gaze travel across the blue-and-white scenes: Jorge Colaço created roughly eleven thousand tiles for the façade, installed in nineteen thirty-two, telling episodes from Saint Ildefonso’s life and images from the Gospels.

The church honours Ildefonso of Toledo, who served as bishop there from six hundred and fifty-seven until his death a decade later. Inside, the principal altarpiece was designed by Nicolau Nasoni. This building has endured a violent storm and artillery during Porto’s siege. Renovation of the entrance area later uncovered nineteen burials from the former chapel’s churchyard.