Things to do in Porto

Clérigos Tower

Porto’s best-known landmark is a tower you can climb. A narrow spiral of 225 steps gets you up in five to fifteen minutes. From the balcony at the top you look over the roofs of the Baixa, the old downtown, to the Douro and Gaia’s port cellars.

On the way you cross the church, the first in Portugal built on an oval plan, along its galleries. At noon its two organs play a free concert, and the tower is in two of the Porto passes.

Livraria Lello

Two streets away, the bookshop that calls itself the most beautiful in the world has been open since 1906. Inside are a crimson staircase that forks halfway up, a stained-glass skylight and shelves to the ceiling.

Everyone needs a ticket to go in, and its value comes off a book from the shop’s own imprint. Visitors this year waited 15 to 45 minutes in line, though one walked straight in during the last hour of a weekday.

For a sure way in, a guided walk of about three hours comes with fast-track entry.

São Bento Station

Six minutes from Lello, walk into São Bento, the railway station in the Baixa, and look round the walls. More than 20,000 blue-and-white tiles by the painter Jorge Colaço cover the entrance hall with Portuguese history and country life.

It’s free, with no ticket and no time slot, so it’s an easy stop on the way to the Cathedral.

Porto Cathedral

A short climb from São Bento, the cathedral looks down from its hill onto the Ribeira, the old riverside quarter, with battlements along its front like a fortress. One ticket covers the church, the Gothic cloister with its blue-and-white tiles, the museum and the tower.

In 1387 King João I married Philippa of Lancaster in the cathedral. She was the English princess who became the mother of Henry the Navigator, the prince who launched Portugal’s sea voyages. The Cathedral is in all four Porto passes.

Bolsa Palace

In the Ribeira, Porto’s merchants spent almost 70 years building this palace for themselves, on the ruins of a convent burned in 1832. Near the end of the guided tour comes the Arab Room, an oval hall inspired by the Alhambra, the Moorish palace in Granada. Its walls are gold and red on blue.

The tour lasts 30 minutes, and each language has its own, taken in order of arrival. So book your time at the desk first thing, and see the church next door while you wait. No Porto pass covers it.

Church of São Francisco

From the street, the church beside the palace looks plain and Gothic. Step inside and gilded carving covers the pillars, arches and side chapels, under a bare stone vault.

One ticket also opens the museum rooms and the catacombs.

Dom Luís I Bridge and the Ribeira

Down on the quay, the Ribeira’s stacked, colourful houses are the ones you’ll know from the postcards, and the lower deck of the Dom Luís I bridge starts right there. Crossing on foot costs nothing, on either deck, day and night.

For the view, take the top deck, which you share with metro line D, high over the Ribeira’s roofs and Gaia’s cellars. From the river it’s a climb: take the stairs, go round by the Cathedral or ride the metro from São Bento.

Douro river cruise

From the Ribeira quay, rabelos, the old wooden boats that once brought the port down to Gaia, take you out for 50 minutes. You see the Ribeira on one bank and the wine lodges on the other, and the boat sails under the bridges that join them.

Boats leave the Ribeira every hour, from 11:00 to 16:00 between October and March and from 10:30 to 18:00 between April and September. The trip is in the Porto Highlights Pass.

Port wine cellars in Gaia

Across the bridge, the port lodges line the Gaia riverfront, the houses’ names up on the buildings. Each house runs its own visit, with a guide or an audio guide, and ends with a tasting.

Visits run from half an hour to two hours, almost all of it indoors, so a cellar is a good answer to a wet afternoon. Burmester’s is in the Porto Explorer Pass, and Cálem’s begins in a small museum of how port is made.

Crystal Palace Gardens

Up on the hill west of the centre are eight hectares of romantic gardens. Peacocks wander the paths, and there’s a rose garden and a viewpoint down the river all the way to the sea.

They’re free and open every day from 08:00. Next door, the Romantic Museum is the country house where Charles Albert, the exiled king of Piedmont-Sardinia, died in 1849.

Serralves

Further out, on bus 201 from Aliados in the centre, Serralves is a contemporary art museum in a white building by Álvaro Siza, the Pritzker-winning Portuguese architect. Its park of 18 hectares holds gardens and woods, a pink Art Déco villa and a walkway through the treetops.

The Porto Culture Pass includes the all-access ticket, and Serralves opens on Mondays, when the city museums are shut.

Casa da Música

On the Boavista roundabout, the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas built Porto a concert hall whose main auditorium, the Sala Suggia, has windows, so music can be played there by daylight.

To see inside, join a guided tour of about an hour or go round alone with audioguides, and you might walk in on a rehearsal.

SEA LIFE and the Tram Museum, with children

SEA LIFE Porto, by the Castelo do Queijo fort where the seafront meets Matosinhos, is built for families. You walk through a tunnel in its main tank, the only one in Portugal by the aquarium’s account, with rays, sharks and Mariza the turtle overhead.

Humboldt penguins, from the coasts of Peru and Chile, live outside, and bus 500 runs out there from São Bento.

Back by the river, tram line 1 runs along the Douro to the Tram Museum, where the old trams go back to horse-drawn days and one is open to step inside.