Luxury Hotels Atlas / Places / Portugal / Porto / Pestana Vintage Porto Hotel & World Heritage Site
Pestana Vintage Porto Hotel & World Heritage Site
Porto, Portugal · Pestana · Accessible Luxury
The ground floor is Porto's medieval city wall. Pestana stitched this hotel together from a row of sixteenth to eighteenth century merchant houses on Praça da Ribeira, right on the Douro quay inside the UNESCO World Heritage centre, keeping the hand-carved sandstone and the Postigo do Carvão, a river gate that goes back to 1348. The canary-yellow facades belong to a 1770s redesign of the square by John Whitehead, the British consul in Porto who doubled as its architect. Rooms look across the water to the port lodges of Gaia and the Dom Luís I bridge.
- 109 rooms
- Opened 2000
- Neighborhood: Ribeira
- Architect: John Whitehead (1776-1782 square facade)
About Pestana Vintage Porto Hotel & World Heritage Site
- When the hotel opened in the summer of 2000 as the Pestana Carlton Porto, Ribeira was snarled with traffic by day and avoided at night. Its block was among the first in the district to be restored.
- The houses were protected as a property of public interest in 1971, twenty-five years before Porto's historic centre entered the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1996.
- Its 109 rooms and suites run to ten categories. The cheapest look out from inside the old city walls at quay level; the Plaza rooms face the square instead.
- John Whitehead, who gave the square its western front between 1776 and 1782, is also credited with the Factory House, the British port traders' club a few streets uphill.
History
The hotel occupies a block of houses on Praça da Ribeira whose fabric runs from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, with a hand-carved sandstone ground floor that was once part of Porto's medieval defensive wall and includes the Postigo do Carvão, the coal gate, recorded from 1348. Between 1776 and 1782 the western side of the square was rebuilt to a design by John Whitehead, the British consul in Porto and an architect in his own right, and that is essentially the front the hotel still shows to the river. From 1784 a new quay was laid from the Guindais down to the old anchorages, fixing the shape of the waterfront. The group was classified an Imóvel de Interesse Público in November 1971.
Pestana opened here in the summer of 2000 as the Pestana Carlton Porto, the group's first hotel in the city, after archaeology and long negotiations over the eighteenth-century architecture and UNESCO's requirements. It later expanded into six neighbouring buildings and took the Vintage name. The house now counts 109 units, 90 rooms and 19 suites, across five floors and ten categories, with the Rib Porto restaurant and bar at quay level.
The setting
Praça da Ribeira sits at the bottom of the old town, where the stepped lanes of Porto end at the Douro quay. The whole district went onto the UNESCO World Heritage list in December 1996, and for most of its life it worked rather than posed: the colourful houses and converted sheds along the bank were built for the port wine trade. Straight ahead, the Dom Luís I bridge of 1886 carries traffic and metro trains on two decks, the work of Théophile Seyrig, who had been Gustave Eiffel's partner on the Maria Pia bridge upstream. Across the water in Vila Nova de Gaia stand the port lodges, open for tastings. Uphill are São Bento station and its tiled atrium, the Palácio da Bolsa, and the 1906 Lello bookshop.
Restaurants and bars
- Rib Porto — Restaurant · meat-focused
- Rib Bar — Bar
- Vinology Wine Bar — Bar · Portuguese wine
- Heritage Bar — Bar · Portuguese-inspired snacks
Experiences
- Douro River cruise — Cruises leaving from the docks in front of the hotel.
- Port wine cellar visits — Visit a Port Wine cellar on the Gaia side of the river.
- Historic tram to Foz do Douro — Take the historic tram to Foz do Douro.
- Bike rental — Bike rental available during stay.
Amenities
- Restaurant
- Bars
- Free Wi-Fi
- Business Center
- Gym
- Bike rental
- Transfer/shuttle (payable)
- Wellness center
- Guided Cultural Tours
- Tasting of Regional Products
- Visit of Wine Cellars
- River Cruises
- Shops
- Nightclub/DJ
- Pet-friendly
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