Church of São Francisco

Behind a sober Gothic façade with a single great rose window, the Church of São Francisco in Porto hides an interior almost entirely sheathed in carved and gilded wood. Walls, pillars, side chapels and vaults disappear beneath the Portuguese technique known as talha dourada, applied mostly in the first half of the 18th century, and the effect, a medieval structure dissolved in gold, is unlike anything else in the city.

The Franciscans settled in Porto around 1223 and, after a long dispute with the bishop resolved by papal intervention, began a first small church around 1244. In 1383, with the patronage of King Ferdinand I, they started the present, larger building, completed around 1425 in the plain Gothic manner typical of the mendicant orders. Because its structure has changed little since, São Francisco is the finest Gothic monument in Porto: a three-aisled nave with a raised central aisle, a transept and an apse with three chapels, the crossing lit by a small rose window with pentagram tracery. The south portal, facing the river, keeps its Gothic arches with an inner moulding of Mudéjar character, while the west portal was remade in Baroque style with Solomonic columns and a statue of Saint Francis. Inside, a 13th-century painted granite figure of the saint survives from the first church, and leading families of the city turned the chapels into family pantheons; the chapel of Saint John the Baptist, built around 1534 for João Carneiro by Diogo de Castilho, has intricate Manueline rib vaulting.

The gilt carving is the church's glory, and among its altarpieces the Tree of Jesse in the north aisle stands out: carved by Filipe da Silva and António Gomes under a contract of 1718, it shows the twelve kings of Judah branching from the sleeping figure of Jesse, rising to Joseph, the Virgin and the Child. The old cloisters burned during the siege of Porto in 1832, and the city's Commercial Association built the Neoclassical Palácio da Bolsa on their site. Beside the church stand the 18th-century church of the Franciscan Third Order and its Casa do Despacho.

Porto, Portugal's second city, climbs steeply from the north bank of the Douro, and its historic centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site; São Francisco lies in its lower part, just above the riverside Ribeira quarter.

Getting there

The church stands in the historic centre of Porto, beside the Palácio da Bolsa and just above the Ribeira waterfront, about 0.9 km from the city centre. Francisco de Sá Carneiro Airport (OPO) is about 13 km away.