Explore Porto

The Capela das Almas is a chapel on Rua de Santa Catarina, Porto's main shopping street, rebuilt in the late 18th century and enlarged in 1801. In 1929 its outer walls were covered with 15,947 blue and white azulejo tiles by Eduardo Leite, made by the Viúva Lamego factory in Lisbon, showing the lives of Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Catherine.

Café Majestic is a café on Rua de Santa Catarina in Porto, opened in 1922 and designed by the architect José Pinto de Oliveira in the Art Nouveau style. Its carved façade and the room of mirrors and wood panelling behind it were restored after decades of decline, and the café reopened in 1994.

Livraria Lello is a bookshop on Rua das Carmelitas in Porto, opened in 1906 in a neo-Gothic building designed by the engineer Francisco Xavier Esteves for the brothers José and António Lello. Inside, a forked red staircase rises to the upper floor beneath a stained-glass skylight; entry is by timed ticket, which doubles as a voucher for a book.

The Church of Saint Ildefonso stands above Praça da Batalha in Porto; built from 1709 on the site of a medieval chapel, it was blessed in 1739. Its twin-towered granite façade carries about 11,000 azulejo tiles by Jorge Colaço from 1932, and inside are a retable by Nicolau Nasoni and a small museum of sacred art.

The Clérigos Tower is the 75-metre baroque bell tower of the Clérigos Church in Porto, designed by the Italian-born architect Nicolau Nasoni and built between 1754 and 1763. Visitors climb about 240 steps to a gallery overlooking the old town and the Douro, and the ticket also covers the church and a museum on the Clérigos brotherhood and on Nasoni.

The Igreja de Santa Clara is the church of a former convent of Poor Clares in Porto, begun in 1416 next to the Fernandine Walls and completed in 1457. Behind its Renaissance portal, the interior is covered in gilded and polychrome Baroque woodwork; the church has been a national monument since 1910.

The Church of São Francisco is a Gothic church in Porto's historic centre, built by the Franciscans from 1383 to about 1425 beside today's Palácio da Bolsa. Its plain stone nave contrasts with the gilded Baroque woodwork covering walls, pillars and chapels, including a Tree of Jesse altarpiece; the visit continues to the Third Order church, a museum and catacombs.

The Crystal Palace Gardens are a public park on a hill in Porto's Massarelos district, laid out in the 1860s by the German landscape gardener Émile David around the city's former Crystal Palace. The palace was replaced in the 1950s by the domed Rosa Mota Pavilion; avenues, fountains and terraces look out over the Douro.