Highlights of Porto 1, Porto, Portugal

The very first adjective to use to describe Porto has to be colorful. Yes, the city has a lot of history and quite a few significant monuments and points of interest - which is the main reason why it as a whole is a World Heritage site - but it’s the color variety of the building façades that will be your overriding impression. Nowhere that is better illustrated than in this fairly iconic shot of the Ribeira district from the opposite side of the Douro river.

The elegant tower on the left is that of the Clérigos church. We will see it again on several occasions and even climb to its top.

For once I did not bother to remove all of the construction cranes in the shot. They well illustrate the amount of renovation and reconstruction going on in the city center. Just on the street that we called home for our few days of stay, there were no less than half a dozen active construction projects going on at the same time. If all those works come to an end eventually, the city undoubtedly will be even more striking to the eye.

The stand-out white building on the right is the Episcopal Palace, which actually does not feature as a top point of interest despite its prominence in the city landscape. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).