Porto is like a wave over the hills on the Douro, modest and intoxicating at the same time.
The best way to get an overview of Porto is to walk a little way away: time and again, when I was in the city, I walked over the ingeniously constructed, 60–meter-high Dom Luís I arch bridge, inaugurated in 1886 – the aesthetic marvel of a former Gustave Eiffel partner. Just five minutes later, and I was, on the other bank of the Douro, in the neighboring town of Vila Nova de Gaia. From there, Porto can be understood across the river with a single glance, as if it were a handful of city.
Many times I sat like this in one of the restaurants and cafés on the shore, where the Scottish, English and Dutch port wine producers had settled since the early 19th century. The ropes stretched over me and the cabins of the Teleférico de Gaia tourist cable car whirred, and I was amazed at how confidently and elegantly Porto towers over the circumstances. Like a wave, it stretches over a chain of hills: coming from the Atlantic Ocean, it starts up, rises, descends, rises again and reaches its earthly climax with the monumentally placed former bishop’s Palace, before it swings down into the Douro Valley and runs out into a fairy-tale hinterland with the bends of the river.
Porto is constantly rising. This is what it feels like when you walk through a city perched on a chain of hills. Almost all alleys strive upwards or curves uphill; you have to work out Porto, climb its height. For this, whenever I was there, I always had the feeling of being lifted up myself during the ascent. At the same time, there was always the precious illusion of security, because Porto is located, cleverly offset, about ten kilometers from the ocean – a flood could not reach the city. And, this is also typical of Porto’s location: I always had the impression that the city fits into its surroundings, neither changes nor destroys it.
Of course, I was in completely different cities. In cities that have straightened their rivers and subdued their surroundings. In cities that seem dismissive and indifferent. In cities that are looking for prominence with splendor and show-off. In cities that overwhelm, slay, overwhelm the visitor. Porto does not need all this. Needs neither arrogance nor ambition, neither indifference nor arrogance. Porto knows about its modest size, 42 square kilometers of area, currently 238,000 inhabitants – not exactly metropolitan, maybe, but this small Porto is big in many other ways.
Porto is flowing. And somehow I always flow with it. From top to bottom, everything seems to be oriented towards the Douro River, on which water taxis, sailboats, excursion boats and sometimes yachts cruise and cross from morning to evening. Moored on the banks are dark wooden old transport boats with long oars, the Barcos Rabelos, still appreciated as testimonies of a time when port wine barrels were still laboriously rolled ashore.
A city that has arisen on the river and at the same time nestles up to it, as if it is grateful to him that he has always brought in world and goods – such a trading city is open and facing the unknown. And mostly citizens live there, for whom the image and beauty of their homeland are important location factors. Which is why they invested in Porto, built neat houses, but did not complete everything, so that the various parts now form a harmonious whole. Each time I was happy that, despite the hustle and bustle of the streets and the traffic intensity, I did not feel pressured by anything, but was able to enjoy the dialogue between the 14th and 21st centuries: the Romanesque cathedral, the Gothic church, the neoclassical Stock Exchange Palace, the Belle Époque Café Majestic and the Casa da Música concert hall, designed by Rem Koolhaas in 2005 like a large crystal of white exposed concrete. The front on the waterfront street Cais da Estiva with the sometimes two windows narrow, but often four-storey houses in yellow, ocher, pink and dark red has a fascinating rhythm. The buildings do not appear to be roughly placed, but rather inserted into each other in a planned manner on a small area.
In a former royal building on the Rua da Alfândega, near the shore road, an important man was probably born on March 4, 1394: Henry the Navigator, initiator and organizer of Portuguese voyages of discovery, especially to Africa. They once made Portugal a maritime and colonial power. Earlier than Spain, earlier than the Netherlands, earlier than England. Sharp tongues claim that Portugal is still mourning a greatness that it has never possessed. Which is why the country is also known for its saudade, its diffuse melancholy.
The mysticism of the fog
In fact, Porto is fun. Openness. Movement. The Douro always flows and sparkles like a promise of an unceasing future, even when it is under fog. And how many times the mysticism of the Porto nebulization amazed me when I couldn’t even see the cathedral in the morning! It was as if the city had been wiped off the face of the earth, before it returned more cheerfully than ever after a short time under an azure sky.
Porto is entertaining. A surprise follows behind almost every bend: a church or chapel covered with blue and white wall tiles, or an unexpectedly spacious square after winding alleys. Once I was sitting in front of the Torre dos Clérigos, this unique icon of the very late Baroque with a bell tower and a 225-step spiral staircase. Wherever you are here, I thought, Porto always remains an embodiment of the not-to-principle: not too complicated, but always stimulating. Not too big, but big enough not to get bored. Not built too high, but when buildings are high, they are elegant. Not too many architectural icons, but if there are, then some of Pritzker Prize winners. Oh – and the weather? Never too cold and never too hot.
When it comes to Portugal, one often looks to the south: Lisbon, Lagos, Algarve. But Porto is north, and in two ways: geographically and spiritually. Its essence is Atlantic. Despite all the loveliness, the roughness of the open and the serenity of the always different lives here. “Porto,” says the excellent German-speaking mayor Rui Moreira in the largest room of his large town hall, “is a very Hanseatic city in terms of mentality.” A city with a mercantile soul, a port city, a “city of the wind,” as Moreira says; in spirit, it is more closely related to Hamburg, Antwerp and Amsterdam than to Lisbon. When ships come, you are first curious about who and what is approaching on them. Porto has preserved this virtue of openness to the stranger and the unknown to this day, as if it originated from a joint appointment of its inhabitants.
Although Porto is liberal, unites opposites, allows, integrates – the old still remains of value. Although new subway shafts are being excavated here and traffic routes are being changed, it would not occur to you to completely mothball the historic tramway for this reason. Once again, I am sitting in the only car of the Linha 18, one of the three remaining of the former thirty tram lines, with a steering wheel, a pull bell, polished wood and brass fittings, and immediately I feel like I have been transported back a century. The car rumbles along the Douro for a while before suddenly turning left, pulling up and rattling up the hill into the heart of the old town, where shops with traditional crafts and hip boutiques in contemporary design are intertwined. Handmade ceramic products, hand–cut leather shoes, hand-carved guitars – in which other city center does such handmade craftsmanship survive? An astonishing number of furniture and interior designers from Germany and abroad have moved to Porto in recent years. There is hardly any fast food in all respects, and ideological trends take a little longer to arrive at the western edge of Europe. With beautiful obstinacy, the lovably developmentally delayed Porto has so far refused to conform to the global lifestyle.
Porto sounds. There is always music somewhere, either live and unprofessional in squares, in streets and on the quays, with some excellent street musicians from all over the world. Or as jazz in the clubs and as symphonic classical in the temples of professional high culture. When thousands of wreaths of lights are reflected in the night-black river water in the evening, the daily unplanned open-air festival begins, and like so many, I also stand at the Cais da Ribeira again and again and listen to the four, five, ten or even more singers and guitareros. Tourists eat, drink and sing in the restaurants and bars, bystanders gather on the street. Clap to the rhythm of catchy evergreens from Bob Dylan to Oasis, and occasionally some dance, and just like that.
And then the summer evenings at the top of the Jardim de Morro, where the cableway cabins arrive and take off! Hundreds, especially young people from all cultures, gather on the grassy hill and peacefully celebrate the sunset to the songs of a live musician or the house beats from the Bluetooth box. For me, this is every time a moment of pathetic reconciliation with a world that has otherwise gotten out of joint enough.
Ten years ago, the small big city on the Douro was the best kept secret in Europe. She has been at the top of various rankings for five years now.
