Oporto, Torre dos Clerigos.
More vicious, indeed, than the Estrella, but much more original and picturesque, is the Torre dos Clerigos at Oporto, built by the clergy in 1755. It stands at the top of a steep hill leading down to the busiest part of the town. The tower is a square with rounded corners, and is of very considerable height. The main part is four stories in height, of which the lowest is the tallest and the one above it the shortest. All are adorned with pilasters or pilaster strips, and the third, in which is a large belfry window, has an elaborate cornice, rising over the window in a rounded pediment to enclose a great shield of arms. The fourth story is finished by a globe-bearing parapet, within which the tower rises to another parapet much corbelled out. The last or sixth story is set still further back and ends in a fantastic dome-shaped roof. In short, the tower is a good example of the wonderful and ingenious way in which the eighteenth-century builders of Portugal often contrived the strangest results by a use—or misuse—of pieces of classic detail, forming a whole often more Chinese than Western in appearance, but at the same time not unpicturesque.[171]
Oporto, Quinta do Freixo.
A much more pleasing example of the same school—a school doubtless influenced by the bad example of Churriguera in Spain—is the house called the Quinta do Freixo on the Douro a mile or so above the town. Here the four towers with their pointed slate roofs rise in so picturesque a way at the four corners, and the whole house blends so well with the parapets and terraces of the garden, that one can almost forgive the broken pediments which form so strange a gable over the door, and the still more strange shapes of the windows. Now that factory chimneys rise close on either side the charm is spoiled, but once the house, with its turrets, its vase-laden parapets, its rococo windows, and the slates painted pale blue that cover its walls, must have been a fit setting for the artificial civilisation of a hundred and fifty years ago, and for the ladies in dresses of silk brocade and gentlemen in flowered waistcoats and powdered hair who once must have gone up and down the terrace steps, or sat in the shell grottoes of the garden.
Queluz.
Though less picturesque and fantastic, the royal palace at Queluz, between Lisbon and Cintra, is another really pleasing example of the more sober rococo. Built by Dom Pedro iii. about 1780, the palace is a long building with a low tiled roof, and the gardens are rich in fountains and statues.
Guimarães, Quinta.
Somewhat similar, but unfinished, and enriched with niches and statues, is a Quinta near the station at Guimarães. Standing on a slope, the garden descends northwards in beautiful terraces, whose fronts are covered with tiles. Being well cared for, it is rich in beautiful trees and shrubs.
Oporto, Hospital and Factory.
Much more correct, and it must be said commonplace, are the hospital and the English factory—or club-house—in Oporto. The plans of both have clearly been sent out from England, the hospital especially being thoroughly English in design. Planned on so vast a scale that it has never been completed, with the pediment of its Doric portico unfinished, the hospital is yet a fine building, simple and severe, not unlike what might have been designed by some pupil of Chambers.