Exterior view

Lisbon was the architectural centre of the Enlightenment in Portugal, but other parts of the country - as well as the overseas colonies - aspired to replace the predominant late Baroque style with a more rational formal language. In Porto, the pragmatism of the style, preferred by Pombal in Lisbon, was combined by the Neo-Palladian ideas of the city’s English colony, which had dominated the port wine trade since the Methuen Treaties of 1703.

Evidence of this so-called “port wine architecture” can be found in the enormous Hospital de Santo Ant�nio with its Neoclassical portico. It is the work of the English architect John Carr, who delivered the plans in 1769, without ever having set foot in Portugal.

In this Baroque maritime city, it must, at first, have appeared as if it had been set down in the wrong place, but a short while later it was followed by various other Palladian buildings.