Igreja de Santo António dos Congregados

This guide to the Igreja de Santo Antonio dos Congregados in Porto traces a Baroque church built by a lay brotherhood in the sixteen fifties and finished at the turn of the eighteenth century. It follows the building through Portugal's 1832 Siege of Porto, when soldiers turned its nave into a war depot and field hospital, and into the turmoil of 1834, when the crown dissolved the country's religious orders and the brotherhood lost the church outright. Look up at the facade as you approach; the tiles you see there came generations after this part of the story.