The bell gallery
Porto in full circle from 75 metres.
Krzysztof Golik — CC BY-SA 4.0 · John Samuel — CC BY-SA 4.0 · ほっきー — CC0 · thirdsphoto — CC BY 2.0
An Italian who came to paint the cathedral (1725) and was captured by the city fifty years: Clérigos, the cathedral loggia, the episcopal palace, the north's churches — he shaped virtually all Porto's granite baroque, dying a lay brother buried unmarked in his oval church: the whole city his headstone.
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Clérigos is Porto's sky needle: a 75-metre bell tower that stood two centuries as Portugal's tallest building — raised by Nicolau Nasoni (1763), the Italian who gave Porto its entire baroque, signing here his final masterwork and lying in its church unmarked, as he willed. Its 225 tight spiral steps climb the granite core to the bell gallery: Porto complete in a circle — tiles falling to the Douro, bridge, Gaia, and the ocean west on clear days: the centre's best panorama uncontested. The church below is oval in plan (a Portuguese first) in marble baroque — the ticket folding it with the brotherhood's small museum. Its door stands steps from Lello and the Carmo: the western centre's triangle in two hours — and climb early or at sunset: the narrow stair jams where climbers meet descenders.
Porto in full circle from 75 metres.
Portugal's first oval church.
Rua São Filipe de Nery, 4050-546 Porto