[2] After the family returned to Portugal in 1929, he attended the Lyceum Camões and, following the death of his mother when he was 14, he studied at the Colégio Infante de Sagres in Lisbon.
Upon his return to Portugal, he firstly worked at the National Museum of Ancient Art for four years, and, in 1951, he was invited to take part in a study of the Portuguese architecture in Goa, Damão and Diu, India.
His final position from 1983, until his retirement from public work in 1986, was as advisor to Natália Correia Guedes who was the first President of the Portuguese Institute of Cultural Heritage.
[7][3] As well as the research he undertook that resulted in multiple published works both in Portuguese and English, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation holds a collection of correspondence, which they consider important to the study of the history of art in Portugal in the modern period, between Carlos de Azevedo and fellow art historians,[8] for example, Robert C. Smith, Professor at the School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania, whose speciality was Brazilian and Portuguese Baroque[9] and C. R. Boxer, Camoens Professor of Portuguese studies at King's College London,[10] whom he met while in Oxford.
[3] Charles Boxer and Carlos de Azevedo later worked on the book Fort Jesus and the Portuguese in Mombasa, 1593-1729.