Blue-and-white tiled churches
Porto
Granite churches and a railway station clad in huge blue-and-white tile pictures, above a riverside of coloured houses.
Why Porto is azulejo blue
Porto stands on the steep north bank of the Douro river in northern Portugal. The city is built of dark grey granite, and against it the tile work stands out strongly. The hall of São Bento railway station is lined with about twenty thousand tiles painted by Jorge Colaço in the early 20th century, showing battles and country life in blue and white. The outside walls of several churches, such as the Chapel of Souls and the Carmo church, are covered in similar scenes. Down by the river, the tall narrow houses of the Ribeira quarter are painted ochre, red and blue, with washing on the balconies. The historic centre is a World Heritage Site.
Values are fair approximations of what the eye sees there, not measurements.
Colours tied to Porto
Written by the Rang desk with AI assistance. Background: "Porto" on Wikipedia. If you know Porto and we have it wrong, tell us.
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🇵🇹 City of tiles and yellow tramsLisbonHouse fronts covered in patterned glazed tiles, yellow trams on steep hills and pavements of white stone.
🇵🇹 Painted boats on the canalsAveiroA lagoon town of canals, where high-prowed boats carry bright hand-painted panels, and salt is piled in white heaps.
🇵🇹 The striped housesCosta NovaA beach village near Aveiro whose wooden houses are painted in bold vertical stripes on white.
🇮🇳 The Blue CityJodhpurOld-city houses washed in blue crowd the foot of Mehrangarh Fort, on the edge of the Thar Desert.🇮🇳 Town of mud-resist block printBagruA small town near Jaipur where the Chhipa community prints cotton by hand in indigo, black and red.
🇮🇳 Prayer flags over a high desertLehStrings of five-coloured prayer flags and white stupas stand out against the brown mountains of Ladakh.Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Jodhpur In: Lavpatel2008, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Leh In: Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0, source
- Lisbon Pt: Lacobrigo, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Aveiro Pt: Joaomartinho63, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Costa Nova Pt: Vitor Oliveira, CC BY-SA 2.0, source