Porto, the country’s second city

This charming location, the country’s second city of Porto, which is a Unesco world heritage site, is the gateway to the beautiful Douro Valley which is a wine tourism destination in its own right.

While once visitors queued for the scenic cruises along the Douro river and the city’s 300-year-old port houses owned by British families including Taylor, Warre, Graham, Cockburn, Symington and Dow, on the south bank of the river, the centre is now being rediscovered by both tourists and property investors.

The granite city – with six bridges spanning the Douro river including the Maria Pia bridge, by Gustave Eiffel –is easy to navigate, full of cobbled streets, with a buzzing riverside of pavement cafés. The fact is that Baixa, the historical centre of Porto, has been rather abandoned by many of the locals. For years and some of its streets have the feel of a ghost town. Street upon street of once-elegant townhouses, their façades of colourful ceramic tiles broken and dirty, have lain empty since the 1950s.

Since then the population of the heart of the city has dropped from 500,000 to 50,000 – a fraction of Porto’s total of 230,000.

Liz Rowlinson is won over by the promise of Portugal’s second city, read her full story:

www.aplaceinthesun.com/articles/2017/04/porto-s-new-golden-age