Palácio da Bolsa (Bolsa Palace)

On the Palácio da Bolsa tour, from the courtyard to the Arab Room

The bolsa in its name is a trading exchange, and the palace is still the seat of the Associação Comercial do Porto, the city’s commercial association. You only see it on a guided tour, at the guide’s pace, and visitors say photos and video are allowed.

The tour passes through the Nations’ Courtyard, in the middle of the building, and reviewers say the Arab Room comes near the end.

The stairway and the rooms upstairs

The stone stairway climbs in two flights between carved balustrades to the rooms upstairs. There, visitors in 2026 describe the old Commercial Court, the Tribunal Room, then a Golden Room and a room hung with portraits of the Portuguese kings.

One room stays shut: the palace lists the library as closed to visitors.

The Arab Room

A ring of columns runs round the oval, and its arches hold up a gallery. The arabesques on the walls stand out in relief, gold and red on blue, and the ceiling is a web of interlaced patterns. Then look down: the floor is a mosaic of three woods, jacaranda, satinwood and mahogany.

Gustavo Adolfo Gonçalves e Sousa, one of the palace’s six architects, designed the room. It opened on 12 June 1880, in the celebrations for the 300th anniversary of the death of Camões, Portugal’s national poet.

Palácio da Bolsa tickets and how the tours work

Adults pay €14 for the tour, and students, school groups and seniors pay €9.50. You pick your tour time at the palace’s desk, and none of the Porto passes covers it.

The tour is short, but the wait for one in your language can be long. Each language has its own tours, filled in order of arrival, and a reviewer reports that sign-up closes at 50 people.

In May 2026 one visitor arrived at 12:40 and the next English tour was at 14:00. Another got there at 10:20 one December morning in 2025 and found the first free slot at 16:00.

So stop at the desk as early as you can, book your time and fill the gap nearby.

As for the tours themselves, reviewers keep coming back to the guides, nearly always warmly. The complaints are about the pace: some found the half hour rushed, and a few thought it dear for the time.

How Porto’s merchants built the Palácio da Bolsa

The palace stands where the São Francisco convent stood until the night of 24 July 1832. That summer Porto was under siege, in Portugal’s civil war between liberals and absolutists, and the convent burned almost to the ground. Only its church survived, and it’s still next door.

Ten years later, on 19 June 1842, Queen Maria II gave the ruins to the city’s merchants. They laid the first stone on 6 October, under their president, the Baron of Ancede.

The merchants built it themselves, and it took them almost 70 years. Six architects took turns, from Joaquim da Costa Lima Júnior, who drew the neoclassical palace, to José Marques da Silva, the architect of São Bento station.

More than 300,000 people a year take the tour today, the association says.

What’s next door to the Palácio da Bolsa

The entrance is on Rua de Ferreira Borges, next to Praça do Infante D. Henrique, nine minutes or so downhill from São Bento station. Three sights within a few minutes of the door fit into the wait.