Porto: The Descending Walk — São Bento to the Douro

Look up. Look around. You are standing in an entrance hall covered in roughly twenty thousand azulejos — hand-painted ceramic tiles — depicting scenes from Portuguese history, landscapes, and everyday rural life. The tiles were designed by the artist Jorge Colaço between nineteen oh five and nineteen sixteen. Eleven years of work. He painted the blue glaze onto over twenty thousand individual tiles, each one fired in a kiln, then assembled in panels across this hall. The total tiled surface is five hundred and fifty square metres. It's one of the great interior spaces of Portugal, and it's free to walk into.

Now, before we talk about the art, a word about the word. Azulejo is not from the Portuguese word for blue, azul. That's a coincidence. It actually comes from the Arabic word al zulaycha, meaning "small polished stone." The tradition was brought to Iberia by the Moors in the eighth century, adopted by the Portuguese when they reconquered Lisbon in the twelfth century, and over the next seven hundred years it developed into the distinctive blue-on-white Portuguese style you see in every historic building in the country.

Now, the scenes. Colaço wasn't just decorating — he was telling a story. Walk up to the main panel on the western wall, the big one on your right as you enter. That's the Battle of Valdevez, fought in eleven forty. It was a tournament-style joust between the armies of Portugal and the Kingdom of León, and it ended in a Portuguese victory that helped cement the country's independence. Colaço painted it because Porto, more than any other Portuguese city, identifies with the founding of the nation.

The opposite wall, to your left, shows the Conquest of Ceuta in fourteen fifteen. Prince Henry the Navigator led a Portuguese fleet across the Strait of Gibraltar to capture the Moroccan port of Ceuta, which marks the beginning of the Portuguese Age of Exploration. And here's the connection to Porto specifically: the fleet was built, provisioned, and launched from here. The ships sailed from the mouth of the Douro River, just a kilometre from where you're standing.

That departure from Porto in fourteen fifteen gave the city its nickname. Before the fleet sailed, the people of Porto allegedly slaughtered all their livestock and gave the best cuts of meat to feed the soldiers, keeping nothing for themselves except the tripe — the stomach lining, considered the least desirable cut. Ever since, the people of Porto have been known as tripeiros, tripe-eaters, and tripas à moda do Porto, Porto-style tripe with beans, is still the city's signature dish. It's a nickname worn with pride, not shame — a reminder that Porto gave its last for Portugal's first empire.

When you're ready, exit the station through the main doors. You'll emerge on a small square called Praça de Almeida Garrett. Cross to the far side and walk up the hill on Rua dos Clérigos, the street rising to your left. After three minutes of uphill walking, you'll see a tall baroque bell tower ahead. That's our next stop.

The church and tower were commissioned by the Brotherhood of the Clergy, a Porto religious confraternity, and built between seventeen thirty-two and seventeen sixty-three. Nasoni designed the church first in a flowing Italian Baroque style — the church's oval nave is a real rarity in Portugal, where churches traditionally have a rectangular plan. The tower was a later addition, started in seventeen fifty-four, slimmer and more vertical than Italian towers of the period. Nasoni was inspired by northern Italian bell towers, particularly those in Tuscany.

You can climb the tower for eight euros. The climb is narrow, steep, and the staircase spirals inside the stone walls. The views from the top are the best in the city — on a clear day you can see the entire old town, the river, and across to Vila Nova de Gaia, where we'll end this walk. On the way down, the ticket also includes access to the church and a small museum of religious art.

Here's a detail you won't find in most guidebooks. The tower was used during the Peninsular War, between eighteen oh seven and eighteen fourteen, as a lookout post by British and Portuguese forces fighting Napoleon's invasion. The French occupied Porto briefly in eighteen oh nine, and the British general Arthur Wellesley — later the Duke of Wellington — surprised them by crossing the Douro in broad daylight and retaking the city in a single afternoon. The Clérigos Tower gave Wellington's scouts a perfect view of the French positions.

When you're ready, walk down the hill past the tower's base and turn right onto Rua das Carmelitas. After about a hundred metres, on your right, you'll see a small shop with a queue of people waiting to get in. That's our next stop, and I need to have a gentle conversation with you about it.

Now, about Harry Potter. Here's the story that gets repeated ad nauseam: J. K. Rowling lived in Porto from nineteen ninety-one to nineteen ninety-three, teaching English at an institute called Encounter English and working on the first Harry Potter book in her spare time. She met and married the Portuguese journalist Jorge Arantes here. Their daughter Jessica was born in Porto. During her two years here, she visited Livraria Lello. This part is true.

The part that's contested is whether the bookshop inspired the interiors of Hogwarts — specifically the moving staircases. The bookshop's own marketing department heavily promotes this claim. Rowling has repeatedly and publicly denied it. In a Twitter post from twenty twenty, she wrote that she had never mentioned Lello in any Harry Potter interview, did not draw inspiration from it, and that the claim had been manufactured by the shop itself.

So. Is it a beautiful bookshop? Yes, one of the most beautiful in Europe. The red wooden staircase that curves through the centre of the shop, the stained glass skylight above, the carved Gothic-Revival façade — all of it is genuinely spectacular. Is it the bookshop that inspired Harry Potter? Almost certainly not.

The queue outside is real and can be over an hour in high season. The entry ticket is eight euros, which is redeemable against any book you buy. If you want to go in, go early in the morning, before nine-thirty, when the queue is shortest. Or skip it entirely — the Clérigos Tower view is more memorable, and your walking tour does not require going inside this building.

The one thing about Lello that I'll defend without reservation: the interior was genuinely, ambitiously beautiful when it opened in nineteen oh six. The Lello brothers believed that books were sacred, and that a bookshop should be built like a cathedral. In that, they succeeded.

When you're ready, continue down Rua das Carmelitas for another hundred metres, then turn left onto Praça de Lisboa. You'll emerge onto a grand boulevard lined with Beaux-Arts buildings. That's Aliados Avenue, and we're going to walk up it.

The name, Aliados, refers to the Allies of the First World War. Portugal entered the war in nineteen sixteen on the side of the British and French, partly to protect its African colonies from German claims. The war cost Portugal about eight thousand lives. When the avenue was completed shortly after the war ended, it was named in honour of the Allied victory.

Walk up the boulevard. At the top, you'll see the Câmara Municipal, Porto's City Hall, built between nineteen twenty and nineteen fifty-seven in a monumental Beaux-Arts style. The clock tower is seventy metres tall. The building is open to visitors some weekdays — the interior has a magnificent staircase, carved wooden panelling, and a session hall where the city council still meets.

In front of the City Hall, look for the bronze equestrian statue. That's King Pedro the Fourth of Portugal, also known as Pedro the First of Brazil. Pedro is the reason Brazil is independent — he declared Brazilian independence in eighteen twenty-two while serving as regent of the Portuguese colony, and then ruled as Emperor of Brazil until eighteen thirty-one. He then returned to Portugal to fight a civil war against his brother Miguel, won, restored constitutional government, and died in Lisbon in eighteen thirty-four at the age of thirty-five. His heart — literally his heart, preserved in a crystal container — is enshrined in the Igreja da Lapa church a short walk from here. He bequeathed it to the people of Porto for their loyalty during the civil war.

Yes, this city has a refrigerated royal heart.

When you're ready, walk back down Aliados toward the station. Then turn left on Rua do Ferraz, a small side street, and walk east toward the Sé Cathedral, which you'll see perched on the hill above you. It's a ten-minute walk uphill.

Go inside, if you have time. The entrance is free, though the cloister charges three euros. The interior is dark, narrow, and solemn — typical Portuguese Romanesque, with thick stone walls and small high windows letting in thin shafts of light. The huge silver altarpiece dates from the sixteen hundreds and is one of the most impressive in Portugal — it's about eight hundred kilograms of silver, hammered and cast, and was saved during the French invasion of eighteen oh nine when the parishioners hid it behind a plaster wall. The cloister, accessible through a door to the left of the altar, is magnificent — Gothic arches, azulejo tile panels by Valentim de Almeida from the seventeen thirties, and a rose garden in the centre.

There's one more thing to notice. If you come around to the back of the cathedral, on the north side, you'll find a bronze equestrian statue of Vímara Peres, the ninth-century Asturian nobleman who recaptured Porto from Muslim forces in eight sixty-eight and established the County of Portugal. This was the political unit that eventually became the country of Portugal. So the statue, the cathedral, and this square together mark the literal birthplace of the Portuguese nation.

When you're done exploring, walk to the southern edge of the terrace, where you can see down into the old town. Find the street called Rua das Flores, which descends away from the cathedral. Follow it. You're going to walk one of the prettiest streets in Porto.

Look at the buildings as you walk. Most are four storeys tall, with tiled façades — blue, green, yellow, white — that are classic Porto architecture. The ground floors are mostly shops and cafés. The upper floors are still residential or converted to boutique hotels. The wooden balconies, the wrought-iron window grilles, the Manueline stonework around some of the doorways — all of this is original, sixteenth to eighteenth century.

Halfway down the street, on your right, is the Igreja da Misericórdia, a small but important Baroque church built between fifteen fifty-nine and fifteen ninety. The adjoining Museu da Misericórdia is worth a visit if you have an hour — the museum preserves the Fons Vitae, a sixteenth-century Flemish painting depicting the royal family of King Manuel the First kneeling before the crucified Christ. It's one of the great Renaissance paintings in Portugal, possibly painted by Quentin Massys himself.

Further down, at number seventeen, you'll find A Vida Portuguesa, a shop that sells only products made in Portugal — traditional soaps, ceramics, canned fish, wool blankets, hand-embroidered linens. If you want to take home something actually Portuguese rather than a generic tourist souvenir, this is the place.

At the bottom of Rua das Flores, you'll come out on a small plaza at the corner of Rua do Infante Dom Henrique. Turn right. Two minutes later, you'll see a grand Neoclassical building on your right with a large stone façade and a glass-roofed courtyard visible through the entrance. That's our next stop, the Palácio da Bolsa — the former Stock Exchange.

Buy the ten-euro guided tour ticket at the entrance. The tour takes forty minutes. You'll walk through a series of rooms that each tell a different story about nineteenth-century Porto mercantile culture. The first is the Hall of Nations, the central courtyard with the glass roof, decorated with the coats of arms of the countries that traded with Porto in the eighteen hundreds. The second is the Court Room, where the Chamber of Commerce still occasionally holds ceremonies. The third is the General Assembly Room, with a painted ceiling depicting the nations of the world in allegorical form.

But the room you came for is the last stop on the tour: the Salão Árabe, the Arab Room. It is one of the most spectacular interior spaces in Portugal.

The Arab Room was designed by the architect Gonçalo Gomes da Silva and took eighteen years to decorate, between eighteen sixty-two and eighteen eighty. It's modelled on the Alhambra in Granada and the Alcázar in Seville — Moorish revival style, with every surface covered in gilded plasterwork, painted tilework, and stained glass. The walls and ceiling are decorated with Arabic calligraphy, much of it quoting passages from the Koran in praise of Queen Maria the Second of Portugal. Yes — Koranic calligraphy honouring a Christian monarch. The nineteenth-century Portuguese romanticism of Moorish Iberia was genuinely weird.

The room was designed as a reception hall for visiting diplomats and dignitaries. It's still used that way — Queen Elizabeth the Second, Pope John Paul the Second, Fidel Castro, and Ronald Reagan have all been received here. Events and state dinners occasionally take place inside, which means that even the guided tour sometimes can't access it. Check the schedule before you queue.

When you're done with the Bolsa, walk out the main entrance and turn left. Immediately next door, sharing a wall with the Bolsa, is a small Gothic church. That's our next stop, and despite the plain exterior, the interior is one of the most ostentatious in Portugal.

Go inside. The ticket is eight euros, and it covers the church, the adjacent museum, and the catacombs below. When you step through the door, prepare yourself. The church is covered — walls, ceiling, pillars, altar, balconies — in gilded wood carvings. The wood is covered in three hundred kilograms of pure gold leaf, applied between sixteen ninety-five and seventeen twenty-five during a massive Baroque renovation. Every surface catches the light. The effect is genuinely overwhelming, and slightly unsettling. Medieval poverty vs. Baroque wealth, in the same room.

The centrepiece is the Árvore de Jessé, the Tree of Jesse, a carved wooden altarpiece depicting the genealogy of Jesus Christ. It was carved between seventeen oh seven and seventeen eighteen by Filipe da Silva and António Gomes, two local master woodcarvers. The tree rises from the reclining figure of Jesse, the father of King David, at the base. Twelve kings of Judah climb the branches above him. Each is rendered in intricate detail — robes, crowns, faces individualised. At the top of the tree sit the Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph, and the infant Jesus. The whole composition is roughly three metres tall and absolutely dripping in gold. It is the single finest piece of Baroque wood carving in Portugal and arguably in Europe.

Local legend says that when the Franciscan monks first saw the completed interior of their church in the seventeen twenties, they were so horrified by the wealth — so contradictory to their vow of poverty — that they formally complained. It didn't help. The Baroque was the style of the Counter-Reformation, and the Franciscans had to live with it. The order was finally suppressed in Portugal in eighteen thirty-four, during the liberal reforms, and the church passed to the Ordem da Terceira de São Francisco, a lay confraternity that still owns it today.

Below the church, accessible via stone stairs from the adjoining museum, are the catacombs. They're not spooky, at least not intentionally — they're the burial chambers of the lay brothers of the confraternity. Ornate stone tombs line the walls, each with the family name of the deceased carved into the stone lid. In the central hall, beneath a grate in the floor, you can see into an ossuary — a pit filled with unidentified human bones. It's real. Seven hundred years of Porto's most faithful, reduced to a single pile.

When you're done, exit onto Rua do Infante and walk toward the river. Two minutes later, you'll emerge onto the Praça da Ribeira, a small riverside square. Turn right. Walk along the quay. You've arrived at the Cais da Ribeira, the beating heart of old Porto.

The Ribeira is an UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was recognised in nineteen ninety-six, specifically for being one of the best-preserved medieval waterfronts in Europe. The narrow alleys climbing up from the quay into the old town — some of them so narrow that two people cannot pass — date from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The tall, thin houses, which are so deep that some of them open onto streets both at the top of the hill and at the bottom, were built this way because the Portuguese crown taxed each house based on how wide its frontage was. The narrower you built, the less tax you paid. So Porto's houses grew up rather than out, crowding tightly together and stacking eccentrically on the slope.

Now, look out at the river. You'll probably see at least one boat tied up along the quayside with a very distinctive design — long, narrow wooden hull, a single mast, a flat deck at the stern. That's a barco rabelo, a rabelo boat. For nearly three hundred years, these boats were the workhorses of the port wine trade. They were loaded upstream, a hundred and fifty kilometres east, in the Douro Valley, where the grapes for port wine are grown. They sailed downriver carrying oak barrels of young wine, past rapids and cataracts, sometimes losing barrels, sometimes losing men, all the way to the Gaia side of the river, where the wine would be transferred to stone warehouses and aged for decades before being shipped out.

The rabelos no longer do commercial work — the construction of dams on the Douro in the twentieth century made the trip impossible, and the wine now comes down by truck. But the boats you see here are still original, still afloat, and several of them offer tourist cruises on the river. A one-hour cruise under the bridges of Porto costs about eighteen euros, and if you have the time, it's an excellent way to see the city from the water.

Pause here. Sit for a drink if you like — the cafés along the quay all serve a decent glass of white port with tonic water, which is the local apéritif, light and refreshing. When you're ready, walk downstream along the quay toward the bridge. That's our last stop, and it's the crossing.

Eiffel was a prolific civil engineer, and he did design a beautiful iron railway bridge over the Douro — but it's the other one, the Ponte Maria Pia, about a kilometre upstream from here. It's still standing, still lovely, though no longer in use as a railway bridge. Eiffel designed it with his partner in eighteen seventy-seven. That was Eiffel's bridge.

The Dom Luís the First Bridge, the one in front of you, was designed by Théophile Seyrig, Eiffel's former business partner. After completing the Maria Pia, Seyrig left Eiffel's firm and set up his own, and when the city of Porto held a competition in eighteen seventy-nine for a second bridge, Seyrig's design won. So this is Seyrig's work. Eiffel's partner, not Eiffel himself. The Eiffel attribution became fashionable in twentieth-century travel writing and has stuck, but it's wrong.

Regardless of whose name is on the blueprint, the bridge is a masterpiece. Walk onto it. Take the lower deck — we're going across to the Vila Nova de Gaia side, and the lower deck takes you directly to the port wine lodges. On the way back later, I'd strongly recommend taking the upper deck, which gives you the spectacular panoramic view.

Now, as you walk across, a final piece of context. The city across the river, Vila Nova de Gaia, is technically a separate municipality — not Porto. It's where all the great port wine houses have their lodges, the huge stone warehouses where the wine is aged. Sandeman. Graham's. Taylor's. Cálem. Croft. Ferreira. Kopke. Burmester. Dow's. Fonseca. Many of them were founded by British merchants in the seventeen hundreds, after the Methuen Treaty of seventeen oh three gave English merchants preferential rights to Portuguese wines.

Here's the detail that most visitors miss. Port wine, legally, cannot be aged in Porto itself. It can only be aged in Vila Nova de Gaia. This was decreed in sixteen seventy-eight, confirmed by a royal charter in seventeen fifty-six — the oldest wine region classification in the world, two hundred years before Bordeaux got its one. The Douro Valley grows the grapes. Porto ships the wine. But the ageing — the ten-year tawny, the twenty-year reserve, the hundred-year-old vintage from your grandfather's birth year — all of that happens on the south side of this bridge, in the town you're walking to.

When you step off the bridge, you'll find yourself on the Cais de Gaia, lined with port lodges offering tastings from ten euros. Taylor's and Graham's are the most prestigious. Cálem is the most tourist-friendly and usually has the shortest wait. Pick whichever suits you. Then, when you're ready to head back, walk up the hill to the upper level of the bridge and cross back on the top deck. The view of Porto in the late afternoon — the city sloping down to the Ribeira, the cathedral silhouetted on the hill, the iron bridge below you — is the view that makes people fall in love with this city.

Welcome to Porto. Drink responsibly.