Unquestionably Portugal’s second city, Porto sits compactly on the north bank of the Douro river near where it enters the Atlantic. Much of the city’s historic core and old riverside quays are still attractively un-sanitised and the prevailing work ethic makes it a more ‘real’ city than Lisbon. Famous for port wine, its bridges and football, the city makes a great destination for a short break, and combines well with cities such as Braga, Guimarães and Coimbra to make a longer trip, not to mention a trip up the Douro valley to the famous terraced vineyards.

Highlights of the old city (a UNESCO world heritage site) include the vast tiled scenes at the old São Bento railway station; the birthplace of Prince Henry the Navigator; the deconsecrated church of São Francisco, all granite outside, smothered with baroque gold leaf within; the maze of streets in the Ribeira district leading down to the quayside; and the double level iron bridge over the Douro named after Dom Luís, which is not by Gustav Eiffel but by his studio.

At one end of Avenida da Boavista (allegedly the longest straight street in any city in Europe) stands the iconic new Casa da Música building, in the running for the 2007 Stirling Prize and presenting events for all musical tastes. At the other end of the Avenida you come to the Atlantic and the suburb of Foz, with its own small historic centre and a lot of beachfront cafés and promenades from which to watch the waves break in the sunset. In between, the Serralves contemporary art museum is one of the top attractions for its range of visiting exhibitions in stunning modern architecture, all surrounded by extensive parkland.

Porto is today smaller in population than its sister city Vila Nova de Gaia (‘Gaia’ for short) which faces it across the river; together with the surrounding towns of Matosinhos, Maia, Gondomar and Valongo, they make up the 1.5 million or so conurbation of Greater Porto. It is in Gaia that all the port companies’ lodges are situated. Almost all of them offer tours and tastings, though some are not open at weekends. Away from the quayside, you only have to walk a few metres to encounter streets and buildings which appear not to have changed for centuries.

You can also sample port wine by the glass at the Solar do Vinho do Porto near Palácio Cristal in Porto, whether a chilled white port before dinner or something heavier and red after dinner – the place is open until midnight.

The smart new metro system connects well with public buses and you can use Andante cards for hopping on and off the integrated services. The metro runs to the spanking new airport to the north of the city, but you’ll find that taxis in Portugal are also cheap by European standards.

Porto is decreasingly known by its anglicised name, Oporto. This version of the name comes from the fact that, when it is used in a sentence in Portuguese, ‘Porto’ (literally, and not very imaginatively, ‘port’) has a definite article ‘o’ in front of it, similar to the way in which Le Havre in France styles itself. However the name itself is definitely just Porto, and this is becoming much more widely adopted outside Portugal.