The city of Porto

The Palace of the Arts

The city of Porto

HERITAGE 2012 will be held at Porto, the second most important city in Portugal and it located along the hills overlooking the Douro river estuary.

It has been continuously inhabited since at least the 4th century, when the Romans referred to it as Portus Calle. It became within the last century one of the major urban areas in the Iberian Peninsula and its historical center was awarded World Heritage status by UNESCO in 1996. Although Porto is one of the oldest European centers, this city is nowadays a busy industrial and commercial center.

The city itself isn't very populous but the Porto metropolitan area ranks some 1.500.000 inhabitants in a 50 km radius, with cities such as Gaia, Matosinhos, Maia, Gondomar and Espinho.

The center of Porto tends towards the baroque and it is granitic and monumental. This can be seen mainly in the core of the downtown area: Avenida dos Aliados. The area shows us that Porto has always been a mercantile city.

Porto's geography is known as hard on the feet, but pleasant to the eye because the city is extremely hilly, with many buildings built into a cliff face that overlooks the river. Porto presents a wide range of interesting museums and monuments for people to see such as “Casa da Música” and Clérigos Tower.

Near the river there is the “Ribeira” (in English “riverside”) where there are a lot of bars, restaurants and places to relax and look up to the Douro river. On the other side of the river, in the suburb of Gaia, are located the warehouses of notable companies dealing with Port Wine.

The city is officially styled “the very noble, always faithful, and invincible city of Porto” and its citizens, while definitely Portuguese, hold themselves apart culturally from the rest of the country, as is expressed in the often heard phrase "o Porto é uma nação" (Porto is a nation).

The Palace of Arts

The conference venue will be at the "Palácio das Artes - Fábrica de Talentos" (Palace of Arts - Talent Factory) that is located on the historical centre of Porto, near the River Douro, at S. Domingos Square, 16-22.

The building is owned by Foundation for Youth, who kindly joined Heritage 2012 as an institutional partner.

(Click to enlarge)