Porto, Portugal
06/10/2022
Thursday was the first day together as the entire group from the office. We had an architectural walking tour planned. As my first day in town had shown, Porto is quite a walkable city. And despite offering a numerous sights and attractions, the only a little over 200.000 inhabitants make it truly a small town. But that also creates it’s charm.
After breakfast – this time at the hotel – we got picked up in front of the building by our tour guide, a local architect. He took us off the beaten track towards the south through some of the old districts, featuring numerous beautiful old houses. Some of the buildings where abandoned, others already in restoration.
Leaving the secluded alleys, we entered Avenida dos aliados, a broad and important boulevard featuring many impressive buildings like Caixa Geral de Depósitos, a former bank building turned art gallery, and Câmara Municipal do Porto, the city hall.
From there we made our way to Porto São Bento, an incredibly beautiful train station with its walls decorated with local Azulejos. It was quite busy in there – like on most main roads – but we were able to look around and take some pictures nonetheless.
From the train station we continued uphill to the cathedral of Porto Sé do Porto. The surrounding platform offered a nice view in all directions: downhill, where we came from, with the city hall tower in the back, and towards Palácio da Bolsa, where I had been the day earlier.
A little further uphill on the east lay Igreja Paroquial de Santo Ildefonso, yet another church. In front of it was Praça da Batalha, a square used as street market, nearby. From there we went on to have lunch at ‘bolhão bbgourmet’ and the made our way to the famous concert hall Casa da Música by subway.
Casa da Música
Our next stop really deserves its own section: Casa da Música. The concert hall designed by Rem Koolhaas und Ellen van Loon of OMA architects started construction in 1999 and was supposed to be finished by 2001, the year of Porto as the European Capital of Culture. In fact, a lot of the infrastructure (like the subway) were built for this occasion. As it always goes with large building projects, it got delayed a little and opened its doors in 2005 instead. But that didn’t hurt its magic.
We arrived there (almost) on time for a guided tour of the building, which took us through many of the building’s most important areas and premises.
Once outside, we took some pictures and then walked quite a while to Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto, the University of Porto’s architecture institute located on a modernist campus. We had some refreshments inside the cafeteria and looked around the inside, examining the displayed models and sketches of future architects.
With the sun setting and creating a very scenic setting for aerial pictures, I took out my drone for some shots of the area. First I captured the campus and then, with us being quite close to Ponte da Arrábida, flew towards the bridge, careful not to scare any birds or people.
Happy with the pictures, I wrapped it up and wanted to get back to the hotel. The others had already parted and were on their way home, so in order to catch up or even be a little quicker, I took an e-scooter instead. I was in fact faster than everyone else, giving me time to grab a cold beer and some water from the supermarket, as well as freshen up before having incredibly fresh and delicious dinner at ‘Gruta’ in the city centre.
Adeus!