Foz do Douro

This guide to Foz do Douro in Porto begins with a Renaissance bishop, Dom Miguel da Silva, who in the 1520s commissioned a small shrine and lighthouse where the river meets the Atlantic after watching ships wreck against these rocks. He endowed the tower with land and its income to keep a fire burning here every night, and hired the Italian architect Francesco da Cremona to design it. An inscription on the outer wall still explains why he built it: to govern the entrance for ships.