Porto
— — the tile, the river, the cellar across the bridge.
Not only on a wall.
“Porto rises in tiers from the north bank of the Douro just before the river meets the Atlantic. Across the lower deck of the Dom Luís I bridge, in Vila Nova de Gaia, the port lodges have aged wine in oak since the 17th century. The old town is a UNESCO site of azulejo-tiled churches, narrow alleys, and rooftops that catch the last sun coming off the Atlantic. from the studio
Porto, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Porto sits on the north bank of the Douro river, three kilometres from where it empties into the Atlantic, in northern Portugal. The city proper has about 232,000 residents, with roughly 1.7 million in the metropolitan area, making it the country's second-largest urban centre after Lisbon. The historic centre, including the Ribeira waterfront and the wine lodges of Vila Nova de Gaia across the river, was inscribed by UNESCO in 1996. The Romanesque cathedral, the Sé do Porto, has overlooked the river since the 12th century.
Porto's signature surface is the azulejo, the painted ceramic tile that wraps churches, train stations, and ordinary houses across the city. The blue-and-white panels inside São Bento railway station, installed between 1905 and 1916 by Jorge Colaço, contain about 20,000 tiles depicting Portuguese history. The Igreja do Carmo and the Capela das Almas carry full facades. The tradition arrived from Moorish Iberia in the 15th century and was refined into the Portuguese blue-on-white style that defines the city today.
Porto is reached by direct flights from most European capitals into Francisco Sá Carneiro airport, fifteen minutes by metro from the centre, and by the high-speed Alfa Pendular train from Lisbon (about 2 hours 50 minutes). Most visitors base in the Baixa and Ribeira districts on the north bank, then cross the upper deck of the Dom Luís I bridge on foot to the port lodges in Gaia. Sandeman, Taylor's, Graham's, and Ferreira all run tasting cellars open daily. May, June, and September are quietest.