Azulejos

The Portuguese are famous for making tile, mostly blue, often in pictures representing various scenes. They tend to be of religious figures, famous battles, but one restaurant in Lisbon preferred an exterior dedicated to cows, as you see here. Tile work goes way back to colonial times, but is still a live art, we saw a studio creating new ones in Lisbon.

Here is a much more conventional use, showing religious scenes on the side of a church in Porto. We wandered in an caught a lovely impromptu baroque organ music concert, which I hated to leave.


Here is another pretty frequent employment for tiles in Portugal, the celebration of big events in Portuguese history, in this case, the very beginning of Western colonialism in Africa -- O Infante Dom Henrique, known in English as Prince Henry the Navigator, conquering the Moors in Ceuta, to gain a foothold in Africa for a budding Portuguese empire. You can see this one in the main train station in downtown Porto, which has a very large lobby full of historic and folkloric tile murals.