Hotels in Porto

Porto is the second largest city of Portugal, located near the coast in the north of the country. It is built into hills overlooking the Douro river estuary. The city proper of Porto is fairly small, with approximately 240,000 inhabitants, but the greater metropolitan area is quite large, with more than 1.5 million inhabitants. While the official name of the city is Porto, it has become common recently for people from other parts of the country to refer to it as "Oporto". This is due to its close and lengthy association with port wine and the reference to the actual product, "o porto". The people of Porto are also known to consider themselves as culturally distinct from the rest of Portugal, and they often say “o Porto é uma nação,” or ‘Porto is a nation.” The city and its surrounding offer many things to see from Portugal’s rich history, which goes back to the Romans who settled here in the 4th Century. The city is full of interesting architecture from many periods, with medieval and modern buildings side by side. The buildings and atmosphere of Porto are distinct from other Portuguese cities, mostly due to its strong mercantile roots. The downtown of the city is characterized by impressive, monumental granite edifices that also have something elegant and ornate about them.