Igreja do Carmo

This guide to Igreja do Carmo in Porto explains the meter-wide house wedged between two churches, the Baroque Carmo finished in 1768 for a community of friars and the older Carmelitas next door, home to an enclosed order of nuns. It follows why church authorities of the era would not allow the two buildings to touch, and the Casa Escondida built into the gap to keep them apart, sheltering chaplains, hospital doctors and the craftsmen who tiled the facade in 1912. That tilework shows hermits gathering on Mount Carmel and the miracle of the Carmelite scapular.