SPAIN & PORTUGAL PORTO DESTINATIONS T


he story goes that a Scottish wine merchant, who had


grown rich on the success of the thriving port wine trade, stuffed his pockets so full of gold coins that when he fell overboard he was too heavy to swim to safety, and drowned in the Douro river with only his own greed to blame. Although all good folktales


are exaggerated, the point of the story is that Porto is founded on the fortunes of this fortified wine. If you glance across the mouth of the Douro river, you can see brands of port so familiar that UK consumers could be forgiven for assuming they were made at home. It’s even more spectacular at night, with the likes of Graham’s, Cockburn’s, Croft and Taylor’s advertised in lights on the hills


The brands of port are so familiar, UK visitors could be forgiven for assuming they were made at home


grapes found in the vineyards of the Douro Valley and sold from the city centre. With the rise of food and drink


tourism, and a new direct Tap Air Portugal flight from London City airport, the tourism board for Porto & the North of Portugal is making the most of those links with the UK, a huge importer of its most prized product.


of Vila Nova de Gaia, the side of Porto (and technically a different city) where wine merchants built their cellars. With the imposing Dom Luís I Bridge towering above the walkways that are home to many bars and restaurants, it’s quite the view. The city’s history is inextricably linked to the drink, made from


w WHAT TO SEE Porto is not a huge place, so the best way to see the city is to walk its streets, past buildings that date back to the 12th century. The best place to start is the Clérigos Church, or ‘clergyman’s tower’, which locals use as a vantage point and meeting place. From there you can wander through a maze of Baroque


architecture and spot a hospital that was built using the tax collected on selling port wine. Worth a look is the narrowest building in the city, built to separate the Carmo and Carmelitas churches, which it’s safe to say weren’t each other’s biggest fans. The Carmo church, on the corner of Rua do Carmo and Praça de Carlos Alberto, is of particular note as it was the first in the city to have a tiled design on its exterior. The craze of decorating buildings with ceramics dates back to the 19th and early 20th centuries, when Portuguese merchants who had made their fortunes in Brazil returned to the city and wanted to show their wealth – even though they were labelled ‘chamber pot houses’ by


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