PORTRAIT OF PORTO

PORTO, Portugal — Dusk was falling on a cobbled old street down by the River Douro. The spooky old cathedral was getting even spookier. Across the water, the port wine producers were closed up for the night. I looked up at a block of old tiled buildings and let my imagination wander only a little.

And suddenly, there in the buildings’ place stood a line of 50-foot-tall, square-shouldered men in unmatched pajamas. Shades of blue, white, yellow and green. From each tall man’s breast pocket poked the gray head of a tiny old lady or two, surveying the territory below and shouting updates to her counterparts up and down the line.

Then a horn sounded, or a scent wafted up from one of the waterfront restaurants, and the out-sized nightclothes melted back into reality: a row of wildly tiled buildings, roof lines forming perfect square shoulders, tile work forming pajama patterns, upstairs windows placed precisely where breast pockets would be.

Let me say quickly that I had tasted only a modest amount of Porto’s most famous product. But I had been wandering all day through the streets of Portugal’s second biggest city, the northern river-mouth settlement that is the birthplace of port wine, and if the local spirits don’t play a few tricks on you here, the architecture may.

Instead of paint, most of central Porto’s signature buildings are covered with painted and patterned tiles. Some tile works, known as azulejos, derive from 17th century techniques and are prized for their landscapes or scenes from Portuguese history. (In Lisbon, an entire museum is devoted to azulejos.) Other wall tiles are mass-produced patterns that deliver a bold effect, but carry no particular artistic distinction. No two adjacent tiled buildings seem to match, and tiling varies by generation of construction too.

Hence, in a certain light, in a certain frame of mind, in the close quarters of the city’s oldest neighborhood, you get the men-in-pajamas effect. And in the Sa~o Bento train station downtown, at just about any hour, you’re likely to find at least a few gawkers who have no train to catch at all: They’ve come to stand beneath the station’s high ceilings and take in the grand tiled historical scenes.

Porto (some English-language atlases call it Oporto; its 325,000 residents and many others shorten that to Porto) is as hilly as San Francisco, has more iron balcony railings than New Orleans, more accumulated city grit than lower Manhattan. (Porto had a head start, its first cathedral having gone up in 1111.) Its civic emblem is the swooping, two-level Dom Luis I Bridge, which spans 564 feet across the Douro River, dates to 1886 and connects the crumbling yet lively Cais de Ribeira neighborhood with the more stately Vila Nova de Gaia district, home of the port houses.

Referring to that bridge and two others that cross the river nearby, French writer Paul Morand once mused that Porto had laid out its Eiffel towers horizontally. And in fact, the nearby (though less spectacular) Maria Pia Railway Bridge was designed by Eiffel himself in 1877.

In the surrounding countryside, within a three-hour drive, wait perhaps a dozen towns that date back to medieval times. When the passing of an hour needs marking in those towns, someone actually pulls a rope and rings the church bell, instead of playing a tape of bells ringing. In the central city, or in one of those town squares, it’s easy to picture life in the 19th century, maybe even the 18th.

On the traffic-jammed broader boulevards of Porto, or among the undistinguished apartments and industrial parks that fringe the city, it’s all too clear that we have arrived in the late 20th century, and that healthy chunks of Portugal’s northern countryside, formerly quaint but impoverished, are being overtaken by middle-class suburbs and highway projects underwritten by European Union money.

Still, Porto’s core remains thick with atmosphere. Having been left off of the leisure travel industry’s A-list, it doesn’t knock itself out for tourists. And for a certain kind of tourist, that’s an attraction. Last spring, I spent a week in Porto and several neighboring towns, steering my rented car on a route that led north to Viana do Castelo, and east to Guimara~es and Amarante, with Barcelos and Braga along the way. The weather was wet and 60ish; fall is usually drier, with average highs about 65, and the grape harvest in vineyards along the Douro reaching full intensity in late September.

I missed that. But I saw too many great old buildings to count, drank much locally produced wine, ate bacalhau (salted cod) and caldo verde (potato and shredded cabbage soup) in myriad variations, munched olives and pastries (separately), found refuge in a coffeehouse from another time, was trapped by an epic parade, and spent a quiet hour in the most beautiful bookstore I’ve ever seen. Porto and its environs may be not be edging Florence and Tuscany off the A-list any time soon, but for someone looking at architecture and listening for medieval echoes in the narrow streets of the city and the towns that surround it, pleasant surprises await.

*

I started with a bird’s-eye view of Porto: the platform of the Torre dos Clerigos church, atop a narrow, 248-foot-high stairwell. It costs about 75 cents to climb. From the top, you see the Douro wending west from the inland hills, twisting through the city, then emptying into the Atlantic. Along its banks, you see a dense roof-scape of red tiles over Porto’s oldest quarters, with laundry hung to dry on a thousand balconies. (The other prime viewpoint in town is across the river from the high walls of the former Monastery of Serra do Pilar.

Across the river you see clues to the trade that has helped sustain Porto through several centuries of fluctuating economic health. Beginning in the late 17th century, port producers (most of them English-owned companies) got their inventory from barcos rabelos (barrel-bearing boats) that floated down the Douro from the vineyards upstream. Nowadays trucks do that job, but the port houses still line the less crowded side of the river, more than 50 of them, many offering tastings and tours. They keep a few barcos rabelos afloat, too, for the sake of nostalgia and tourism. (For about $10, you can take a 50-minute river cruise under the five bridges that cross the Douro at Porto.)

After an easy stroll across the Dom Luis I, I peeked in at the popular showroom of Sandeman (established 1790), where, Zorro-like, the tour guides are required to wear the company’s signature black hat and cape. I went instead with Calem (founded 1859), where they gave me an agreeable English-language tour, which concluded with a port tasting.

In the maze of narrow old streets on the city side of the river, dozens of restaurants sell salted cod and port, and also bottle after bottle of vinho verde, a young, light, fruity, affordable variety of usually white wine.

It was hard to keep still in Porto; there was so much to look at in every highly concentrated block. In a stationery store, I bought some 50-year-old grade-school teacher’s charts for my wife (who may now try to teach her Silverlake second-graders Portuguese).

One night, the sky inky and the wind gusting, I walked halfway across the high span of the Dom Luis I bridge. I stood on the sidewalk, traffic racing past while winds whipped. I don’t recommend this to acrophobes, but it did help me work out the lay of the land and sharpened my appetite nicely for an after-dinner drink.

Another night, I stood on Rua de Ceuta at 10 p.m., watching after-dinner lingerers communing over coffee at the neon-lighted Cafe Ceuta, a scene that seemed to have been composed by a Portuguese Edward Hopper.

But my favorite cafe experience by far was the Cafe Majestic, a crumbling art nouveau throwback at 112 Rua Santa Catarina, the city’s main pedestrian shopping street. The place dates back to 1921. Cherubs dance before the flaking mirrors on the walls. Cut glass windowpanes swoop in elegant curves. All the wood paneling is elaborately carved, and a grand piano waits in a corner. The waiters wear white coats and gold epaulets. I ordered a small ham sandwich and a coffee (about $5), and spied on the tourist-diners who surrounded me. All European; no Americans.

I stayed in the tony Hotel Infante do Sagres, a retreat of distinguished furnishings and Old World atmosphere that was walking distance from the leading downtown attractions, including the 14th century Church of San Francisco, the historic Palacio de Bolsa (stock exchange) building and the Soares dos Reis Museum (which specializes in 19th century paintings).

In the hotel, there were lots of iron handrails, stained glass, and more tile work. I found the staff reserved at first, but by the time I left, desk staffers had given me good driving and walking directions, time-saving rental-car logistical advice and sound restaurant recommendations. (There are plenty of hotels in town available in the $50 to $100 range. For a couple of recommendations, see Guidebook on this page.)

The Porto building that made the biggest impression on me was Lello & Irma~o Bookshop, a two-story wonder of art nouveau craftsmanship and miniaturism at 144 Rua das Carmelitas, in the shadow of the Torre dos Clerigos. The store, opened in 1906 and restored in 1994, is fronted by a white facade that looks inspired by a wedding cake. But never mind that. Step inside, and you’re swallowed by a small world of stained glass skylights, curving red stairs, delicately carved shelves, dramatic lighting, and a diverse selection of books, most written in Portuguese, but with an emphasis on art and design. Upstairs, there’s a tiny, altar-like coffee bar from which you can watch the browsers below. Sitting there, I watched customer after customer enter the store, attitudes visibly brightening as they took in the rare, and rarefied, scene around them.

*

The last surprise Porto held for me came on my final afternoon there. I was headed toward Rua Santa Catarina again. But the shopping hordes, I began to realize, included a large number of 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds in strange costumes and in a big hurry. Then I rounded a corner to face the central Praca da Liberdade, and there was the city’s main drag, cars banished, street packed sidewalk-to-sidewalk by giddy students with toy top hats and canes. Clad in T-shirts advertising their university and major and climbing on floats, they advanced in ranks of red, yellow, blue and green, singing chants and mugging for the crowd. These were the year’s finalistas--university students from throughout the region who were finishing the school year. Every May, they get a day to take over the streets, march, engage in collegiate high jinks, and maybe drink a little bit.

Locals told me that about 50,000 students had converged on the city, with another 150,000 observers lining streets, and I had no problem believing that. It was a wonder. And it was followed by an equally wondrous event: Somehow, my taxi driver found a way around them to my hotel and got me to the airport on time.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

GUIDEBOOK: Porto Pathways

Getting there: Getting to Porto from LAX requires at least one change of planes. Air France flies via Paris, with round-trip restricted fares as low as $1,001. Lufthansa connects through Frankfurt, Swissair through Zurich, and TAP Air Portugal partners with Delta and Continental via Newark and Lisbon.

Where to stay: In Porto: Hotel Infante de Sagres, telephone 011-351-2-200-81-01, fax 011-351-2-31-49-37. Central location, elegant interiors, 74 rooms, fancy dining room; about $170 per night, double occupancy.

Hotel da Bolsa, tel. 011-351-2-202-67-68, fax 011-351-2-31-88-88. Small, basic, central; about $77 per double.

Hotel Internacional, tel. 011-351-2-200-5032, fax 011-2-351-200-9063. Small, with inviting public rooms; restaurant. Former monastery; about $71.

Where to eat: Cafe Majestic, 112 Rua do Santa Catarina, has great faded grandeur. Snacks or breakfast. Restaurante do Molhe, Foz do Douro (local tel. 617-3099) is a pleasant spot with indoor and terrace tables fronting the ocean in an upscale suburb. Main courses $7-$15.

For more information: Portuguese National Tourist Office, 590 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10036; (800) 767-8842, fax (212) 764-6137.