Igreja de São Roque
Jesuit church with a gem-encrusted Baroque chapel built in Rome and shipped piece by piece.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Igreja de São Roque in Lisbon opens with an odd cargo landing at the harbor in 1747: a complete chapel, dismantled in Rome and packed into crates. It follows King João V's obsession with outdoing Europe's royal courts, the Roman artisans and rare stones he commissioned, and the pope who said Mass in the chapel before it was taken apart again for the voyage west. Look closely at the walls inside — every slab was carried here from Rome.
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