# Igreja de São Francisco

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Canonical page: https://mytuur.com/en/city/porto/spot/igreja-de-sao-francisco/

Content updated: 2026-06-22

Igreja de São Francisco stands in Porto as a Franciscan church whose Gothic structure still shapes its three-nave plan. Its pointed arches and ribbed vaults preserve the original design. The friars built this larger temple during the fourteenth century, under King D. Fernando, replacing an earlier chapel. Its prominent transept and tripartite upper section lead towards the main chapel.

In the sixteenth century, architect João de Castilho added the Chapel of São João Baptista to the evolving complex. The eighteenth century brought Brazilian woodcarvings covered with gold leaf. Gilded carvings spread across altars, columns, arches, and all three naves, while local craftsmen added angels, vines, and symbolic figures. The main chapel includes a Tree of Jesse altarpiece, remodelled between 1718 and 1721. Filipe da Silva and António Gomes created the detailed wooden sculpture. It shows Christ’s ancestors emerging from a carved tree.

Below, catacombs served as burial places for Franciscan monks and Porto’s wealthiest families. An ossuary displays thousands of human bones beneath a glass floor. Near Palácio da Bolsa, the building places medieval religious architecture beside a nineteenth-century neoclassical former stock exchange. That contrast links the church’s Gothic shell with Porto’s later civic architecture.

- City: [Porto](https://mytuur.com/en/city/porto/)

## Photos

- ![](https://mytuur-bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/image_IgrejadeSoFrancisco_693155a1b3c809ad6d423014_0.jpg) — [Image: wikimedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Porto.SanFrancisco02.jpg)
- ![](https://mytuur-bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/image_IgrejadeSoFrancisco_693155a1b3c809ad6d423014_1.jpg) — [Image: wikimedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:San_Francisco_Porto.JPG)

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