SYMBOLS Stories of cultural life.

Bernardino José Bragas chapel

The negotiant Bernardino José Braga’s (number 7) chapel was built around 1844-1845, notable for its neopalladian purism.

It is nowadays mischaracterised, but its interior was innovative at the time, because it was a large space with no drawers. The epitaphs were painted on the wall, on each side, forming a list. It originally had a stained glass window with a geometric design over the altar- certainly the first stained glass window used in a tomb-chapel in Portugal. Interestingly, as there is a rocky mass behind the altar, the light from the stained glass window was illusory and was only the one coming from door of the tomb itself.