Capela das Almas

The Capela das Almas de Santa Catarina is an eighteenth-century chapel on Porto's main pedestrian shopping street, and what makes people stop is not the building but its skin: in 1929 Eduardo Leite covered the exterior in around fifteen thousand nine hundred blue and white azulejos showing scenes from the lives of St Francis of Assisi and St Catherine, including her martyrdom, deliberately worked in an eighteenth-century idiom so that the tiles look two centuries older than they are. The effect from the street corner - a solid blue building among ordinary shopfronts - is why it is one of the most photographed things in Porto. Inside it is a small, plain working chapel with a modest baroque altar, and services run through the day. Rua de Santa Catarina outside is the city's busiest shopping street, and the Café Majestic is a short walk down it.

What you actually see

• The tiled exterior - around 15,900 azulejos applied in 1929 by Eduardo Leite.
• The scenes - the lives of St Francis and St Catherine, including her martyrdom.
• The deliberate anachronism - twentieth-century work in an eighteenth-century idiom.
• The plain interior - a small working chapel behind a spectacular skin.

When to go

Year-round. Twenty to thirty minutes. Early morning for photographs without the shopping crowds.

Honest expectations

The interior is ordinary - the point is entirely the outside. Rua de Santa Catarina is extremely crowded most of the day. Services limit access. There is no room to step back for a full photograph without standing in the street.

Nearby

The Bolhão market is a block away; Café Majestic is down the same street.