Porto, also known as Oporto (English) is the second largest city in Portugal (220,000 inhabitants) and the capital of Portugal’s northern region.
The city of Porto, built along the hillsides overlooking the mouth of the Douro River in northern Portugal, Porto is one of the oldest European urban centers, and registered as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1996 due to its outstanding urban landscape with a 2,000-year history, when it was an outpost of the Roman Empire. Its Latin name, Portus Cale, has been referred to as the origin for the name "Portugal," based on transliteration and oral evolution from Latin. Its continuous growth, linked to the sea can be seen in the many and varied monuments and the city’s unconditional support to the expeditions organized by Henry the Navigator (who was born in Porto) in the early 15th century. The nickname given to the people of Porto began in those days; “Portuenses” are, to this day, colloquially referred to as “tripeiros” referring to this period of history, when higher-quality cuts of meat were shipped from Porto with their sailors, while off-cuts and by-products, such as tripe, were left behind for the citizens of Porto: tripe remains a culturally important dish in modern day Porto.
Among the architectural highlights of the city, Porto’s Cathedral is the oldest surviving structure, together with the small Romanesque Church of Cedofeita, the gothic Igreja de São Francisco (Church of Saint Francis), the remnants of the city walls and a few 15th-century houses. The baroque style is well represented in the city in the elaborate gilt work interior decoration of the churches of St. Francis and St. Claire (Santa Clara), the churches of Mercy (Misericórida) and of the Clerics (Igreja dos Clérigos), the Episcopal Palace of Porto, and others. The neoclassicism and romanticism of the 19th and 20th centuries also added interesting monuments to the landscape of the city, like the magnificent Stock Exchange Palace (Palácio da Bolsa), the tile-adorned São Bento Train Station and the gardens of the Crystal Palace (Palácio de Cristal). In 2001, Porto shared with Rotterdam the designation of European Culture Capital, the main legacy of which has been the construction of the major concert hall space Rem Koolhaas’ Casa da Música, finished in 2005. Porto is also home to the Serralves Contemporary Art Museum ,designed by Alvaro Siza Vieira, and to Livraria Lello, a magnificent art-nouveau inspired space always in the top 10 lists of the most beautiful bookshops in the world. Another art-noveau jewel of the city is Café Majestic a former bastion of local artists and intellectuals when it first opened almost 90 years ago. Porto is also quite proud to be known as the city of work. Actually, its inhabitants have always been in the front line to defend national causes and greatly contributed to the Discoveries as well as to the region's economic development as one of the most dynamic areas in the country's entrepreneurial tissue. The roughness of hard work, however, is counter-balanced by its welcoming nature.
