Bonfim & Santo Ildefonso
East of the centre, where Porto stops being a destination and starts being a city. Bonfim is roughly eighty per cent ordinary neighbourhood and twenty per cent the thing that happens when art students, specialty coffee roasters and a Michelin-starred counter move into cheap streets — a working district with a fine-arts faculty in it, terraces of tiled houses, a cemetery that doubles as a sculpture museum, and the best river viewpoint in the city that nobody has heard of.
Who it's for: Anyone on day three or four who has done the sights and wants to see how Porto actually lives. Coffee people — the city's specialty roasting scene is concentrated here and nowhere else. Serious eaters, at both ends: a one-star tasting counter and the best pork sandwich in Portugal are ten minutes apart. Anyone who wants a viewpoint without a crowd.
Things to know
- Miradouro das Fontainhas shows you four bridges at once — Dom Luís I, Infante, Maria Pia and São João — from a bench under trees, for free, with almost nobody on it. It is the single best-value viewpoint in Porto.
- On the night of 23 June, São João, Fontainhas is where the neighbourhood watches the fireworks over the river. If you are here for the festival, this is the local answer to the crush on Ribeira.
- Casa Guedes on Praça dos Poveiros does the sandes de pernil — slow-roasted pork in a roll, about €5.60, or roughly €7.70 with Serra da Estrela cheese melted into it. Get the cheese version. It is the best-value plate of food in the city.
- Euskalduna Studio seats a single-figure number of people per service. Booking is not a formality here — it is the only way in, and it needs weeks.
- Prado do Repouso, opened 1839, is Porto's first public cemetery and functions as an open-air sculpture museum, with work by Soares dos Reis among others. It is free, open to walk into, and treated with normal cemetery respect rather than as an attraction.
- This is where Porto's specialty coffee actually is. If you have been disappointed by Portuguese espresso, von&vonnie and Combi Coffee Roasters will change your mind — both roast their own.
- Maus Hábitos is on the fourth floor of an Art Deco building opposite the Coliseu and has been running since 1999: gallery, restaurant, bar, club and a terrace, with a different themed fair every Saturday. It is not signposted at street level in any obvious way — find the entrance and go up.
- Bonfim is a fifteen-minute uphill walk from Aliados, or metro to Campo 24 de Agosto or Heroísmo. Coming back downhill into the centre is the easy direction.
- Parts of Bonfim are visibly poorer than the centre and it is an ordinary residential district rather than a curated one. It is safe; it is also somebody's neighbourhood, so behave accordingly in the residential streets.
- Suribachi on Rua do Bonfim has been doing macrobiotic and vegan buffet food for decades — genuinely useful in a city where vegetarian options are often an afterthought.