Clérigos Tower: The Baroque Granite Beacon
Why is it significant?
Stand in the Campo das Hortas and tilt your gaze upward toward the seventy-five-meter granite pinnacle of the Clérigos Tower.
Key Facts
| Place | Clérigos Tower: The Baroque Granite Beacon |
|---|---|
| Address | R. de São Filipe de Nery, 4050-546 Porto |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.14580, -8.61440 |
| Part of Walk | Porto of Granite & Gold: Blue Azulejos, Port Cellars, and the Douro River |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand in the Campo das Hortas and tilt your gaze upward toward the seventy-five-meter granite pinnacle of the Clérigos Tower. Completed in seventeen sixty-three for the Brotherhood of Poor Clerics, this soaring bell tower designed by Italian architect Nicolau Nasoni was for nearly two centuries the tallest architectural structure in Portugal.
Because Porto's steep hills command dramatic maritime vistas, sailors navigating merchant ships across the treacherous sandbar at the mouth of the Douro River used the silhouette of this tower as their primary navigational beacon from miles out at sea.
Inside the tower, two hundred and twenty-five spiral granite steps lead to the observation platform. In nineteen seventeen, a pair of acrobatic Spanish performers, father and son Puertollano, stunned thousands of gathered townspeople by climbing the outside stone facade without ropes to advertise a brand of cookies.
Walk just fifty paces north to the ornate neo-Gothic facade of Livraria Lello.