Casa da Música

The Sala Suggia and the halls of Casa da Música

The building is a block of white concrete on Avenida da Boavista. The big hall runs through the middle of it, from the second floor to the fourth, and the smaller rooms are stacked around it.

The Sala Suggia

The main hall seats 1,238 and is named after Guilhermina Suggia, a Porto-born cellist who made her career across Europe in the early 20th century.

Seven windows look out of the hall, some to the outside and some into the rooms around it, and they’re what let music be played here by daylight alone. The glass is curved, too, shaped to spread and balance the sound.

The Sala Suggia’s wood and seats

Up close, the walls and the ceiling are Nordic pine, and even the fabric on the seats was picked for the way it treats the sound.

The seats have a trick of their own. They slide, so you can reach the middle of a full row without anyone having to stand up.

Sala 2, the tiled rooms and the terrace of Casa da Música

Start in the lobby, on the first floor under the main hall. Through its perforated aluminium wall you can watch rehearsals, and in six small rooms you can see soloists and small ensembles.

On the fourth floor, the Cybermusic room has a window onto the Sala Suggia’s stage. It opens when the programme allows, even during daytime rehearsals and concerts. The Sala Renascença, on the same floor, is tiled in blue, green and white.

The second hall, Sala 2, is one floor up, with 300 seats or room for 650 standing. Its walls are perforated plywood dipped in red paint, and a huge south window gives the daylight a red tinge.

Tiles return in the sixth-floor VIP room, with panels based on Portuguese and Dutch ceramics of the 1500s and 1600s. Its view runs from the top of the Clérigos Tower to the Atlantic.

At the very top, Koolhaas turned a technical floor into a terrace, an indoor square under a skylight that opens.

Casa da Música tours, tickets and opening hours

There are two ways to see inside. The guided tour costs €12 and lasts about an hour, in groups of up to 35. The Open Tour costs €10 and lets you go round on your own, with audioguides you play from QR codes; bring headphones.

Tours in English are booked online, where you pick from the times on offer. Those in Portuguese, Spanish, French and Italian start at 11:00 and 15:00, with tickets sold only at the box office. Neither visit is on Tiqets or in a Porto pass.

The guided tour depends on the day’s rehearsals and concerts. The Casa’s tour leaflet shows Sala 2, the Cybermusic room, the VIP room and the terrace, but which of them you get into can change.

The Open Tour isn’t guaranteed either, and the Casa doesn’t say which rooms it takes in. If the concert halls are what you’re after, ask at the box office on the first floor.

Every area of the building can be reached by lift or ramp. Groups of 15 or more can book their own time and language ahead.

Koolhaas and the competition for Casa da Música

Porto picked Rem Koolhaas and his office, OMA, in a 1999 competition with 26 entries, for its year as European Capital of Culture in 2001. On the jury sat Álvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura, the two Portuguese architects who have won the Pritzker, architecture’s top prize.

The shortlist came down to three: the French architect Dominique Perrault, the Uruguayan-born Rafael Viñoly and Koolhaas.

The office took an earlier project of its own, the Y2K house, about 200 square metres, and reworked it into a building of almost 38,000. It opened in 2005, and two years later it won an award from the RIBA, the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Walking from Casa da Música down to the Douro at Massarelos

Casa da Música is at Avenida da Boavista 604–610, northwest of the centre, with its own metro station on lines A, B, C, E and F. For Serralves, the contemporary art museum and park, take bus 504 or the Metrobus from beside the station, or walk about 45 minutes.