About the Port

Between the river Douro and the Atlantic Ocean at the end of the hilly area of ​​the largest river basin in the Iberian Peninsula, the city of Porto stands as a monument of granite strong, serious and austere, yet powerful, exciting and irresistible.

After a remote past, before the Roman presence left so few traces, the city, like many others in Western Europe, has been reborn in the early Middle Ages. Lewis Mumford once wrote: "Cities are like trees, once established, must be destroyed before they leave the root of life: otherwise, even when the stem is cut, the branches will be formed on the base" . This is the case of Porto, which was reborn from the top of the hill Penaventosa during the Middle Ages, supported by both the national and international trade, the markets held in the great fair at New Street and the river and its shipping routes.

After a turbulent beginning of the nineteenth century, the first thirty years due to many French invasions and epidemic diseases, the city overcome a siege of two years, faced with absolutist supporters of Prince Michael. But the liberal D. Pedro IV and victorious by the end of the nineteenth century the city of Porto focuses on innovation and, in some ways, ensures the power of the country. The cinema, the first railway, and later, the electric show in Portugal at this time. Development of large infrastructure, architectural landmarks of iron in the world, such as bridges D. Mary I and D. Louis I, are also constructed. But Porto is also a core of people and goods, important for Portuguese trade, especially with Brazil, already independent. Moreover, it is essentially a container of goods and people from Portugal and north of the Douro and a center turning in connection with northern Europe. So many cross-cultural influences and produced a city of many shades and multiple identities, from the British accent to the sweet singing Brazilian songs and the Douro.

But Porto is also recognized and looms large before our eyes through the ruins of the wall of the fourteenth century, the regular and symmetrical facades of the eighteenth century and the English-style cottages in the area west of the city or in the manor houses covered with tiles at the east of town. It is a complex unity, a single unit - even though it may seem redundant - that melts on the mast of the baroque filigree Tower of Clerics.

Although the physical boundaries of the Port are not yet precisely defined, were administratively declared in 1895 as the ending Circunvalação, yet the city is now much more metropolis, extending far beyond the outer ring, about one and a half million people who live and feel the Porto - World Heritage Site since 1996 - as its own city.