The storefronts, façades, and marquees of Portugal’s second city offer a startling blend of styles. Traditional tilework, geometric modernism, and startlingly honed typography often cover multiple stories, with signage making full use of the full heights and widths of the city’s varied buildings.
The Coliseu do Porto theater has not one but two monumental neon signs, still functioning in vivid two-color format. The vertical sign spans multiple stories and presents some startling letterforms, particularly the L, S, and E.
The blue-and-white azulejo tilework endemic to the greater Iberian peninsula is on full display in Porto’s city center, with countless other buildings making use of more varied and colorful tiles in near-endless permutations of geometric patterns.
Beyond the large-scale signage and patterns found in the heights, words and patterns also appear in smaller more discrete forms: street names on the sides of buildings span several painted tiles, while business names and directions can be found beneath the feet of passersby, with surprisingly sophisticated typography made from stone and tile.
Fascinating signage can be found throughout central Porto, and appears on most routes when traveling between the city’s better-known sights such as the São Bento train station, the Bolhão market hall, and the Ribeira neighborhood.
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