PORTUGAL: PORTO, PART III - CAPELA DAS ALMAS, IGREJA DE SANTO ILDEFONSO, MAJESTIC CAFE

 June 28, 2022

After lunch we made our way back to the more interesting part of town. When we passed the church on the left, I thought, Wow, how beautiful is that! But then we came up on the church on the right, Capela das Almas (Chapel of Souls). Oh. My. Goodness. 

Yeah, take a look at those tiles. How can you not be overwhelmed at the first site of THIS?

Built in the early 1700s, the Capela das Almas was restored and enlarged in 1801. The tiles weren't added until 1929. Talk about a Cinderella transformation!

The Neoclassical interior is beautiful, but not nearly as spectacular as the exterior.

It has the ubiquitous altar design that Bob calls "wedding cake Jesus."  Yeah, a little disrespectful, but once you see it you can stop seeing (and saying) it.

There are some azulejo murals inside, but again, they don't have the impact of the towering tiled walls outside.

Our next stop was the Igreja do Santo Ildefonso, or the Church of St. Ildefonso. I must confess I had never heard of this saint, who was the Bishop of Toledo in Spain in the 7th century. Completed in 1739, this church has another WOW exterior. About 11,000 azulejo tiles covering the outside walls were added to the building in 1932. (A Portuguese fairy godmother must have delighted in transforming churches during that era.)

Inside is another gilt "Stairway to Heaven/Wedding Cake" altar, this time with the crucified Christ on the top tier.

I have holy envy for stained glass windows, which do exist in my church but are few and far betweeen. The windows in Ildefonso were installed in 1967 and depict scenes from the life of Christ.

This granite church is in the shape of an elongated octagon.

It is ringed by sculptures of the apostles.

A series of small chapels detail the life of Christ.

This one includes a replica of Christ's body shrouded in transparent cloth.

There is an interesting Pietà with a Jesus so emaciated that you can count his ribs.

Another chapel pays homage to Mary, Queen of Heaven.

It had been at least an hour since we last ate, so it was time for a stop at the Majestic Café, first opened in 1922, considered to be one of the most beautiful cafés in the world, and made famous by the author J. K. Rowling (which is why we were there.)

The story is that when Rowling was teaching English in Porto between 1991 and 1993, she sat at this table in the Majestic Café and outlined the entire seven-book Harry Potter series and even started writing the first book. 

The table where she supposedly sat, which is just to the right of the entrance, had a reserved sign on it, and I'm guessing that every patron wants to sit here but no one likes have a thousand tourists taking pictures of them eating. I don't know if the story is true, but it is great marketing. It brought us in for a visit!

 

We had a delicious piece of very chocolate-y cake and some ice cream.

The decorating is Belle Époque, a French-European design period between 1871 and 1914. I love these jolly faces peering down at the guests.

The café was restored and rejuvenated in the 1990s (before Rowling published the Potter books).

This photo from 1923, a year after the café opened, looks just like what we saw in 2022.

Another place I wanted to visit and that supposedly was another Rowling hangout was the Livraria Lello Bookstore. It is one of the oldest bookstores in Portugal and is often ranked among the world's most beautiful bookstores. It was founded in 1869 and opened its doors in this building in 1906.

However, the line to get in was long, a ticket just to walk through the front doors was 5€, and we were tired from our long day, so we opted out.

Dumb decision. I've regretted it ever since. This is what we missed: 

Photo from The Culture Map

Photo from Portoalities

We still had a couple of places to go, but I already knew that I wanted a do over in Porto--maybe three days instead of just one.