Cercadura

Cercadura is a field guide for the tiled facades that turn ordinary streets in Lisbon, Porto, Ovar, Aveiro and São Luís do Maranhão into open-air museums. It's built for the walker who stops mid-sidewalk to look up — locals who've walked past the same azulejos for years, and visitors from Germany, France and Spain trying to make sense of what they're seeing. The core loop is simple: photograph a facade, answer a short five-question identification key (pattern or scene, flat or relief surface, stencilled or hand-painted, colours, and border), and file the result into a walk. Each verdict names a real style — hispano-mourisco, seventeenth-century padrão carpet tiles, blue-and-white figurative panels, pombalino, the great nineteenth-century factories (Viúva Lamego, Sacavém, Fábrica das Devesas, Aleluia), Porto relief tiles, arte nova, art déco and more — with a date range and the facts…