Torre dos Clérigos was designed by an Italian who loved Porto so much he asked to be buried inside it.

Nicolau Nasoni arrived in the city in 1725 and spent decades reshaping its skyline, but the 75-metre bell tower he built for the Brotherhood of the Clérigos between 1754 and 1763 became his masterpiece. It was Portugal's tallest tower at the time, its baroque granite shaft inspired by the Tuscan campaniles of Nasoni's homeland.

The original plan called for two towers flanking the church, but Nasoni talked the Brotherhood into a single, more dramatic structure at the rear. In 1917, two Spanish acrobats, a father-and-son team called the Puertullanos, climbed it from the outside in front of an enormous crowd.

Two hundred and forty steps lead to the top, where the city's terracotta rooftops tilt toward the Douro. Below, the church's unusual elliptical nave holds Nasoni's unmarked grave somewhere in its crypt.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours trace Nasoni's outsized influence on Porto, connecting the tower to his other commissions across the city and explaining how one Italian architect gave a Portuguese city its most recognisable silhouette.