Casa da Música

Casa da Música looks like a meteorite landed in a Porto roundabout — a faceted white concrete polyhedron designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas that's been dividing opinion since it opened in 2005. Some call it a masterpiece. Some call it a spaceship. The people who work inside call it genius, because the acoustics are extraordinary.

The building was Porto's contribution to its year as European Capital of Culture in 2001 (it opened four years late, which is standard for ambitious architecture). The main concert hall seats 1,300 and has corrugated glass walls at both ends that let daylight flood the space — making it one of the few concert halls where you can see the sky while listening to Beethoven. The smaller rooms include a rehearsal hall with 10-tonne sliding panels that can reconfigure the space, and a VIP room entirely covered in hand-painted Portuguese tiles — Koolhaas's nod to local tradition inside his defiantly un-traditional building.

Guided architecture tours run daily and are worth taking even if you're not attending a concert — the building's structural gymnastics are impressive, and the guides explain how Koolhaas solved problems that conventional architecture wouldn't attempt. The concert programme spans classical, jazz, fado, electronic, and experimental music, and the €3 'open port' rehearsals on some afternoons let you watch world-class musicians prepare for the fraction of a ticket price.