Pestana Vintage Porto

The riverfront Pestana Vintage Porto is a five-star hotel on the banks of the Douro.

Porto’s Cais da Ribeira district is one of the city’s most-popular locations for residents and visitors alike. In the shadow of the iconic Ponta Luis II bridge, the district’s lively, family-run restaurants and café bars are a great place to sample the best of northern Portugal’s wines, within a stone’s throw of the famous port houses of Gaia da Nova.

Many of the colourful townhouses and converted warehouses which line the riverbank owe their existence to the Port Wine trade, and the Pestana Vintage Porto is no exception. True to their usual modus operandi, Pestana have sympathetically renovated the original 18^th century riverside building to preserve and celebrate a small slice of Porto’s architectural history, (something Pestana do so well across the whole of Portugal).

Outside, the hotel’s distinctive, canary-yellow hue is a welcoming landmark as you approach the Praca da Ribeira square. An often-overlooked feature of the hotel are its foundations – the hand-carved sandstone ground floor was once part of Porto’s medieval city walls, and the Postigo do Carvao gate dates back to 1348.

Inside, there are ten different types of room across the six stories of the hotels. Classic and Superior rooms can be twins or doubles, and have A/C, TVs, a minbar and free Wi-Fi. Vintage Front View rooms are located on the ground floor within those old city walls and have a partial view of the river, and two floors up the Vintage River View and Vintage Balcony rooms have the full, sweeping panorama of the Douro. Overlooking the Praca da Ribeira, the Plaza rooms have arguably the best view of the Ponta Luis II bridge, and there’s a charming period elegance to the Heritage and Grand View suites.

The in-house Heritage Bistro & Bar is one of the neighbourhood’s best spots for cocktails and tapas, and in the evenings the RIB Beef & Wine Restaurant specialises in (perhaps unsurprisingly) ribeye steaks, often paired with an exceptional range of DOC Douro wines.