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Wine & Books Porto Hotel, Small Luxury Hotels of the World
Porto, Portugal · Independent · Accessible Luxury
The ruined nineteenth-century houses on this corner once belonged to Artur Augusto de Albuquerque Seabra, a mathematics teacher and journalist who sat in Porto's Association of Journalists and Men of Letters, which makes a hotel built on books a fair inheritance. Grupo PBH spent 28 million euros rebuilding behind the old Largo Moinho do Vento facade and opened in November 2023, a few minutes from the Clérigos tower. The lobby is dressed as a Belle Époque café, the kind of room where the city's talkers used to sit all afternoon, with Portuguese wine to match the shelves.
- 70 rooms
- Opened 2023
- Neighborhood: Aliados
- Rooms from 570 sq ft (53 m²)
- Interiors: Joana Saraiva
About Wine & Books Porto Hotel, Small Luxury Hotels of the World
- Joana Saraiva, a trained architect and a director of the owning group, designed the interiors herself rather than hiring the job out.
- The Porto house is the second Wine & Books, following the Lisbon original of 2021, and it belongs to Small Luxury Hotels of the World.
- Dining is at Tasca da Memória, built to the shape of a neighbourhood tavern, with menus drawn from the long shared meals of Portuguese grandmothers.
- Entry-level rooms start at 570 sq ft (53 m²).
History
Wine & Books Porto stands on Rua de José Falcão, between the Aliados and Bolhão and a few minutes from the Clérigos tower, on a nineteenth-century block that had fallen into ruin. Among its earlier owners was Artur Augusto de Albuquerque Seabra, a mathematics teacher and journalist who belonged to Porto's Association of Journalists and Men of Letters. Grupo PBH, the owner of the VidaMar hotels and of the first Wine & Books in Lisbon, spent about five years and 28 million euros on the rebuild, setting the new building carefully behind the surviving facade on Largo Moinho do Vento so that the old street wall was kept.
The hotel opened on 16 November 2023 with roughly seventy rooms over seven floors. Joana Saraiva, an architect by training and a director of the group, handled the interiors and took her reference from Porto's Belle Époque, when the city's cafes served as stages for long literary arguments: varnished wood shelving full of books, leather upholstery and gilt detail in the lobby, and quieter neutral tones in the bedrooms. The house restaurant is Tasca da Memória, and there is an indoor pool, a hammam and sauna, and a rooftop. It is a member of Small Luxury Hotels of the World.
The setting
The hotel sits in the middle of Porto's UNESCO-listed centre, between the Avenida dos Aliados and the Bolhão market, with the Clérigos tower a few minutes uphill and Livraria Lello, the bookshop people queue around the block for, just beyond it. Rua de José Falcão runs into the Galerias de Paris nightlife streets, so the address is walkable to both the neoclassical market and the late bars, and São Bento station is a short walk downhill.
Awards
- MICHELIN One Key (2026)
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