Despite their clichés, Lisbon and Porto are charmingly beautiful and endearing cities.
HERITAGE
1. Last year the British head of our magazine, Condé Nast Traveller, dedicated a report in its City Breaks section to Lisbon and defined it as a "museum city". This is a very effective way of explaining the visual overstimulation that the traveler suffers just when walking through the streets of the Portuguese capital: when stepping on its Portuguese roads (small limestone tesserae that form drawings on the ground and are considered one of the oldest elements in the city), when observing the tilework from different historical periods that covers its facades (if you want to know more, visit its Azulejo Museum) and when verifying that in Lisbon street art is not only not prosecuted but is protected by a municipal body called the Urban Art Gallery (GAU).
For its part, we must thank the recent urban sprucing up of Porto to its street artists, who kept a hard hand on Mayor Rui Rio (who spent liters and liters of paint and public money covering up graffiti) until they got their works to be respected and considered as street art. Also that its gray granite facades have begun to be covered with bright colors it denotes her interest in getting pretty, but she still has a lot of work to do.
two. Although Lisbon has 119 churches and chapels, in this case we will give Porto as the winner, since With its 70 churches, it has perfectly attended to the more than a million and a half souls registered on the banks of the Duero. On the other hand, 119 seem very few for the two and a half million people who live in the Portuguese capital.
The church of the Carmelites and the church of Carmo are stuck wall to wall and seem to be one.
3. That the Soares dos Reis Museum occupies the Palacio dos Carrancas from the 18th century – the oldest palace in the country and through which illustrious personalities passed, such as Pedro IV, who turned it into a royal manor – is a weighty argument... but was to discover the curves of the MAAT (Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology of Lisbon), in the Belém neighborhood, and we can no longer think of anything else. Covered in white tiles, it has a gentle upward slope that many consider to be an open-air exhibition hall, as it leads to a lookout almost 15 meters high that flies over the Tagus like a wave.
Four. The Clérigos Tower, in Porto, is the tallest in Portugal with its 76 meters in height, its more than 200 steps and its 49 bells that put the soundtrack to the city with its chime. Nevertheless, the Torre de Belém, in the Manueline style, is a symbol of the Portuguese strength in the Age of Discovery. With its galleries, its battlements in the form of shields and its decoration related to the new colonies, such as the rhinoceros-shaped gargoyle in homage to a specimen that was brought to Lisbon as a present to King Manuel I, and which they say would have inspired the woodcut Dürer's rhinoceros. 5. The cathedrals of both cities began to be built in the same century, the 12th, and although its essence is Romanesque, the truth is that Porto's has small baroque modifications that give it a somewhat more ornamental point. In the Sé de Lisboa, in the Alfama neighbourhood, Phoenician, Roman and Arab remains have appeared, which gives us an idea of the importance that the place has had throughout history. In this case we declare a technical draw.
The Sé de Porto Cathedral is the most important religious building in the city and was built on its highest point.
NATURE
6. The Parque da Cidade do Porto, which has 80 hectares and extends in a peculiar way to the Atlantic Ocean, is incredible and very beautiful, since its project was commissioned by the landscape architect Sidónio Pardal. Nevertheless, We cannot forget the proximity of Lisbon to several of the most important protected areas in the country: the Sintra-Cascais Natural Park, the Estuário do Tejo Natural Reserve (the largest wetland in Portugal and essential for bird migrations between Europe and Africa), the Arrábida Natural Park and its cliffs and the Estuary Natural Reserve del Sado and its friendly dolphins.
7. The rivers. Oh! The rivers. We have a 'broken heart', as the song would say. The offer to navigate the Tagus and the Sea of Straw, where the river meets the Atlantic, is very wide and varied (by ferry, known as Cacilheiro, by boat or by cruise), but the Duero has conquered us, with its sinuous meanders, its slopes occupied by terraced vineyards and its villas with stately architecture (including the exclusive Six Senses Douro Valley).
8. The closest beaches to Porto and Lisbon are only 10 kilometers away in both cases. But no, we are not going to leave this point in tables, since we cannot ignore that Lisbon is one of the European cities with the best climate: the sun shines about 290 days a year and the average temperature is 22ºC, almost never being less than 15ºC. So the days of sun and beach will be more abundant in the case of the Portuguese capital, and much more if we take into account that, whether by car, train or ferry, we can plant ourselves on the sand in less than half an hour. .
The nearby Costa da Caparica is the favorite of Lisbon's for a beach getaway.
CULTURE
9. The authentic essence of Porto is breathed in the Livraria Lello and Irmão (which they say inspired a scene from Harry Potter), in its elegant Café Majestic from the 1920s and in the stalls of its Mercado do Bolhao, which seem anchored in a nostalgic past . However, Lisbon has much more than the historical patina, the truth is that The Portuguese capital has long stood out for being a 'liquid city' in which things that interest the international traveler always happen: ARCOlisboa, DocLisboa, Rock In Rio...
Not to mention initiatives as powerful and transformative as LX Factory, a creative island in the form of a reclaimed industrial zone, in which all cultural areas have a place: fashion, advertising, communication, multimedia, art, architecture, music, etc. Or the recent Village Underground Lisboa, a coworking space for the creative industry designed by Mariana Duarte Silva under the structure of the 25 de Abril bridge, in which recovered metal containers and an old bus occupy the old Santo Amaro station.
SIGHTSEEING
10. Lisbon receives 21 million visitors a year, so few European cities are so prepared to receive all types of travellers. Luxury and boutique hotels, hostels, bed & breakfasts, apartments that seem to be taken from decoration magazines... the offer is infinite. These are just some of the examples: Pousada de Lisboa for those looking for exclusivity, Martinhal Lisbon Chiado for families, Memmo Alfama with its views and designer interiors, or The Independente Hostel & Suites, which is more expensive than many hotels in the capital. .
Porto also has luxury hotels, such as the Pestana Vintage Porto , or design hotels, such as the newcomer to the shore Torel Avantgarde , but in this case Lisbon continues to win by a landslide.
eleven. For many Lisbon restaurants Sunday is synonymous with Cozido à portuguesa, its most traditional dish and a benchmark of its cuisine. A popular place to go to try it is the David da Buraca tavern or La Tasca de la Esquina. On the other hand, the star dish of Porto is not suitable for all audiences, since its Tripas à moda do Porto, as you can guess, are made up of many types of meat and offal.
In fact, many say that this dish is the reason why the inhabitants of Porto are often called 'tripeiros'. Although others relate the word to the effort dedicated to building the ships that departed from the Duero in the Age of Discovery, years and years in which the people of Porto offered 'all their meat' in pursuit of the conquest.
Y in the north of Portugal, in turn, they call the people from Lisbon 'alfacinhas' (something like lettuce) . First, ironically to refer to his urban tastes and his overacted finesse, but also with a certain historical basis since the name appears referenced in Portuguese literature and would be related to the introduction of this horticultural species in Lisbon during the Arab occupation: the word Al-Hassa, which means lettuce, would have become the current alface.
Cozido à portuguesa at the Lisbon restaurant La Tasca de la Esquina.
THE BRIDGES
12. They are a symbol of the cities and another reason for dispute. Which one to stay with? The mythical April 25, which has joined the banks of the Tagus River since 1966, has become one of the most recognizable icons of Lisbon and, thanks to its reddish structure of more than two kilometers long, north and south of Portugal are united by the coast without needing to take a long detour inland... but a secret report that has just come to light in Visão magazine reveals that it is on the verge of collapse if urgent measures are not taken.
On the other hand, the two-level Don Luis I bridge in Porto bears the signature of Téophile Seyrig, an engineer from the Société de Willebroeck who built it in 1886 and a disciple of Gustave Eiffel. And to make matters worse, it is the obligatory passage to the other shore, that of the city of Vila Nova de Gaia, where the wineries that produce the famous Port wine are located. The Ramos Pinto winery , Ferreira (in a convent) , Calem , Sandeman... Because sorry, Lisbon, you will have more churches, but when it comes to wines and wineries, Porto is the clear winner.
CONCLUSION
As he had already warned at the beginning of this duel, it was to be expected that the clear winner would be Lisbon, finally with 8 points against Porto's 3 (plus a technical tie).
the Portuguese capital It's like that older sister who doesn't benefit from just reading Saramago's books, too she is a high school cheerleader and understands contemporary art. But beware, that the new generations of Portuguese destinations, as is the case with Port , are doing their homework and starting to gain followers with their low cost flights, its adjusted prices, its still authentic essence and everything they have learned by imitation without the need to practice trial and error.
Vila Nova de Gaia can be reached via the Don Luis I bridge or aboard a rabelo, the boat in which the vats arrived from the vineyards of the Douro Valley.