Where To Stay In Porto Now: The New Crop Of Cool Hotels In Portugal’s Second City

Most first-timers to Porto stay by the river. That district, with its colorful narrow buildings and UNESCO designation, is popular for a reason. But it’s not really a window into life in Porto.

Portugal’s second city is a center of fashion, inventive gastronomy and, increasingly, charming small hotels and alternative lodgings that don’t quite fit into any of the conventional hospitality boxes. (To be clear, I’m not talking about Airbnb, a service that the Portuguese government has recently flexed its muscles against.)

While the country is trying to figure out what to do about a tourism industry in flux and its ongoing housing challenges, Porto’s Cedofeita neighborhood stands out as a refreshingly relaxed place to stay. The fantasy of “staying in a place with no tourists” has always been a fantasy, That’s especially true in our hypermobile 2023. But the international flavors are good. And Cedofeita is still a living neighborhood. Sure, there are avocado toast joints, but also restaurants where they’ll serve you a whole fish with its head and its tail still intact, and while they’ll happily welcome tourists, nobody goes out of their way to cater to them. It’s also where you’ll find some of the best low-key bars in town.

But for the best lodgings in the neighborhood, taking care of the visitors is clearly a priority. That’s what makes them worth checking into.

Tipografia do Conto

A spinoff from the insiders’ secret Casa do Conto, Tipografia do Conto (“typography of tales”) is one of those small, design-forward hotels whose back story makes it difficult not to fall in love with. The owner, Alexandra Grande, is a civil engineer by training and an architect by trade. As she was preparing to open her first hotel, in 2009, it was destroyed by a fire. It rose like a phoenix, but this time all in concrete. Her second project, in a former printing house, shares that stylishly industrial vibe, with details like poetry inscribed on the cement ceilings (in my top-floor room, it was “I like birds,” repeatedly.) Charmingly, one of her business partners used that old printing house to print his master’s thesis. Type-related elements are still in place, such as the DJ booth in the old lift that brought printed books to the binding rooms upstairs.

Village by BOA

In the historic microneighborhood of Bairro do Silva, the new aparthotel Village by BOA has reinvented a 19th-century working-class housing complex and turned it into a comfortable base for modern-day visitors to Porto. The 40 apartments are split between several buildings, all with cutting-edge technology and hotel-style services. A concierge is on call, and a fresh, reasonably sized, made-to-order breakfast arrives outside the rooms every morning. (Food waste is all too common in these kinds of places, so it comes as a relief to avoid it.) Between the buildings are gardens and courtyards, plus a sunny rooftop, making it feel like an oasis in the neighborhood.

Chic&Basic Gravity

At first glance, the concept seems gimmicky. When you enter Chic&Basic Gravity, you pass a mirror cube that reproduces your reflection to infinity. In the lobby, the letters seem suspended. Plants hang from the ceiling (even a full-on Christmas tree, when I visited in January), the wallpaper is turned upside-down, and there’s a 36-foot blackboard filled with inverted formulas. Shoes are affixed to the bedroom ceilings. The main attraction is in the inner courtyard; they call it an inverse pool, which appears to slide up a wall. It’s not swimmable, but it’s certainly Instagrammable. But never mind all of that. The four-star hotel lives up both to the chic and basic in its name. (It’s part of a Spanish brand that prioritizes those attributes.) It’s uncomplicated, but the rooms are big enough, the beds are comfy, the showers are hot, there’s a good Italian restaurant downstairs, and there are also a few right-side-up design flourishes. It’s everything you need in one of the city’s most appealing neighborhoods.