Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
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Strolling the Cais da Ribeira (Embankment) and Praça da Ribeira
(Square)
—This is Porto's best lazy-afternoon activity. As you stroll, imagine the busy
port scene before the promenade was reclaimed from the river—riverboats laden with
cargo lashed to the embankment, off-loading their wine and produce into 14th-century
cellars (still visible). The old arcades lining the Ribeira promenade are jammed with hole-
in-the-wall restaurants (made to look more “local” than they actually are) and souvenir
shops. Behind the arcades are skinny, colorful houses draped with drying laundry flut-
tering like flags, while the locals who fly them stand on their little balconies, gossiping.
Riverfront property taxes were based on frontage—promoting the construction of these
narrow, deep, and undeniably picturesque buildings.
The Ribeira neighborhood looks up at the Ponte Dom Luís I bridge, rising 150 feet
above the river. In the 1880s, Teofilo Seyfrig, a protégé of Gustave Eiffel, stretched this
Eiffel Tower-sized wrought-iron contraption across the 500-foot-wide Douro. Eiffel him-
self designed a bridge in Porto, the Ponte Dona Maria Pia, a bit upstream.
While it offers few individual sights, the Ribeira is Porto's most enjoyable neighbor-
hood for killing time and basking in Old World atmosphere. Shoppers eventually find
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