Porto is compact, walkable and easy to love — and almost everything worth seeing is a short walk or a couple of metro stops from our door. Here's where we'd start.
A little history
Porto is older than Portugal itself. The Romans knew it as Portus Cale, a trading port at the mouth of the Douro — and centuries later that name went on to baptise the whole country. Long before roads and railways, everything here moved by river: wine, salt, ships and ideas.
It was Port wine that made the city famous. From 1756 the Douro Valley became one of the world's first demarcated wine regions, and barrels floated downriver to age in the cellars of Vila Nova de Gaia, just across the water — where they still rest today. The merchants' wealth built the granite churches, tiled façades and grand riverside houses you'll walk past every day.
Porto also earned its nickname the hard way: Invicta — the Unvanquished — after withstanding a brutal year-long siege in 1832–33. In 1996, UNESCO declared the historic centre a World Heritage Site, from the Ribeira waterfront to the Dom Luís I Bridge. The result is a city that wears two thousand years of history as casually as its locals do.
Our tips
Start where everyone starts: the Ribeira. Lose yourself in the maze of medieval lanes down to the river, coffee in hand, then cross the top deck of the Dom Luís I Bridge at sunset — the view over the rooftops and the Douro is the best free show in town. On the way, step into São Bento station to see its hall of twenty thousand blue azulejo tiles, and climb to the Cathedral terrace for another angle over the old town.
From the hotel, stroll down to the recently restored Bolhão Market — fruit, cheese and conversation — then along Rua de Santa Catarina, Porto's favourite shopping street. Close by rise the baroque Clérigos Tower, Nicolau Nasoni's granite landmark that rewards the climb, and Livraria Lello, often called one of the most beautiful bookshops in the world; buy the ticket online and go early.
Save an afternoon for the Port wine cellars of Vila Nova de Gaia, where every tour ends in a tasting. Try a francesinha at least once — Porto's gloriously excessive sandwich — and ask our front desk where we eat ours. And to see the city from the water, the six-bridges Douro cruise leaves from the Ribeira all day long.
