How Porto’s gritty, industrial neighbour became a cool coastal hotspot | Porto holidays
Why go now This once declining industrial city is on the up, but not so much that it has been ruined – yet. See it now, mid-gentrification, before its humble seafood restaurants become overpriced and its beautifully curated museums and galleries overrun. Five miles north-west of Porto city centre, Matosinhos (pronounced mh-to-ZEE-nyosh) is a municipality built on the fishing. After the construction of the vast Port of Leixões in the 19th century, its fishing industry boomed and supported 54 canneries in its mid-20th-century heyday. Two survive, but most have been demolished, along with the textile factories and sugar refinery that occupied the district south of the harbour, next to the extensive sands of Matosinhos beach, which are fringed by surf schools and rammed with Porto residents in summer. Luxury apartment blocks have risen from the ashes of once prosperous industries, but these stand cheek by jowl with 19th-century tiled houses, abandoned buildings daubed with graffiti and faded mid-century architectural classics championing raw concrete. The faculty of architecture at the University of Porto exerted its influence …
