Igreja de Santa Clara Audio Guide for Porto

Inside this guide

1. 01

   Welcome to Igreja de Santa Clara

   In Igreja de Santa Clara, this section highlights Welcome to Igreja de Santa Clara as a point to understand and notice during the visit.

   Welcome. You have found one of Porto's quieter treasures, standing at Largo Primeiro de Dezembro, in the parish of Sé, a short walk from the cathedral, deep in the old city. Tucked behind a discreet arch and beside what remains of the medieval town wall, the Igreja de Santa Clara does not shout for attention. Step inside, though, and you meet one of the most overwhelming gilded interiors in Portugal. This is a Catholic church with Gothic bones, begun in the first half of the fifteenth century, whose fame rests on an eighteenth century Baroque transformation that covered the interior in carved, gold leafed woodwork. A word about how I will tell this story. The church and its former convent are documented in heritage records and by the parish itself, and I will stay with what those sources say. Where they disagree, for example about exactly which earlier convent the first nuns came from, I will tell you so rather than smooth it over. Ready? Let us begin in the year fourteen sixteen, with a queen and a request.

2. 02

   A Queen's Request and a Convent on a Hillside

   In Igreja de Santa Clara, this section highlights A Queen's Request and a Convent on a Hillside as a point to understand and notice during the visit.

   Picture Porto in the early fifteenth century, a walled city on a granite slope above the river. Queen Philippa of Lancaster, an English princess who became Queen of Portugal, asked Pope Innocent VII for permission to bring a community of Poor Clares, Franciscan nuns, into the city. Sources differ on precisely which earlier house those nuns came from. One account names Torrão, another points to a convent at Entre Ambos-os-Rios, and I will leave that disagreement standing rather than pick a winner. What is not disputed is the scene itself. The foundation stone was laid in fourteen sixteen at a site called Carvalhos do Monte, inside Porto's fortified borough, by the Bishop of Porto, Fernando Guerra, in the presence of King John I and his court. The nuns settled in the church in fourteen twenty seven, and the building was completed in fourteen fifty seven. Then something remarkable happened over the following century. As smaller monasteries across the region were suppressed, their communities and their incomes were folded into Santa Clara, including a toll levied on merchandise travelling the Douro River. That is how a convent on a hillside became one of the wealthiest religious houses in the north.

3. 03

   A Cathedral Made of Gold

   In Igreja de Santa Clara, this section highlights A Cathedral Made of Gold as a point to understand and notice during the visit.

   Nothing quite prepares you for the interior. The structure is Gothic, but what you see today was lined with carved and gilded woodwork, the Portuguese art of talha dourada, in the first half of the eighteenth century, under King John V, in the style often called the Joanine Baroque. And it was not done modestly. This church is regularly described as one of the largest and most important examples of gilded woodcarving in Portugal, a true jewel of the Baroque. Think about what that represents, thousands of hours of carving and gold leaf applied panel by panel, all aimed at one effect, making the altar read as a doorway into something far larger than the room. Scholars link this explosion of ornament to the Counter Reformation, when opulence itself was an argument meant to inspire devotion and to signal the power of the Church. The entrance gives you a hint of how layered the building is. Its portal dates from sixteen ninety seven and was reworked in the eighteenth century, and writers describe it in slightly different terms, a Baroque door with Renaissance features, Solomonic columns and Corinthian capitals. Buildings like this are never made in one gesture. The Gothic is still down there in the foundations. The Baroque is what you see.

4. 04

   How the Convent Survived the City

   In Igreja de Santa Clara, this section highlights How the Convent Survived the City as a point to understand and notice during the visit.

   Now let us talk about survival, because this place has had several lives. In eighteen thirty four, a decree suppressed religious orders across Portugal, and Santa Clara's monastery received an unusual reprieve, so the community carried on. The convent finally ended when its last nun died in nineteen hundred and one. After that the buildings passed into very practical hands, and over the following decades the former monastery served as a hospital, and later as a health centre and home to other institutions. The convent as a whole was dissolved and fragmented, but three pieces of it survive right around you. The church, which became, and still is, a parish church. The cloister, which today is integrated into the headquarters of the Metropolitan Command of the Public Security Police. And the old convent grounds, which include the best preserved stretch of Porto's medieval town wall, classified as a National Monument. Between twenty sixteen and twenty twenty-one a major conservation operation restored the church and improved it for visitors. So the gold you are looking at is not untouched history. It is history that was rescued, more than once.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   In Igreja de Santa Clara, this section highlights Before You Head Off as a point to understand and notice during the visit.

   Before you move on, take one slow lap. Find the spot where daylight catches the gilded carving and simply watch it shift, because that is exactly what all that gold was made to do, hour by hour, season by season. Then look for the older story underneath, the medieval wall, the discreet arch, the scattered fragments of a convent that once reached far beyond this single room. Two living threads are worth chasing as well. The first is a wedding tradition that the parish still keeps alive here, in which couples offer eggs to Saint Clare of Assisi as a request for good weather on the wedding day. The second is music. The church has announced a twenty twenty six guided visit built around the convent's musical heritage, including a short performance of music composed for this convent in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A building that has been a convent, a hospital, a health centre and now a landmark is still inventing new ways to be useful. Notice what stays with you on the way out.