Palácio da Bolsa, Porto — palace
Michael Gaylard from Horsham, UK · CC BY 4.0

Palácio da Bolsa, Porto

  • 1 min read
  • 41.141° N 8.616° W

Interesting facts

  • The walls and ceiling of the Arab Room are covered with 19th-century stucco bearing Arabic inscriptions picked out in gold.
  • A carved table by the woodcarver Zeferino José Pinto in the Portrait Room took three years to make and won awards at international exhibitions.
  • The glass dome over the Courtyard of the Nations is painted with the coats of arms of Portugal and of the nations it traded with.
  • The busts on the monumental staircase are the work of leading Portuguese sculptors, including António Soares dos Reis and António Teixeira Lopes.
  • Painters such as José Maria Veloso Salgado and António Ramalho contributed canvases and ceiling frescoes to the interiors.
  • The building blends neoclassical, Tuscan and English neo-Palladian elements in a single design.
  • The Tribunal Room was designed by the architect Joel da Silva Pereira, one of several architects who shaped the interiors over seven decades.

Why it is worth it

Porto's merchants built themselves a palace on the ruins of a convent, and lavished decades of work on its interiors. The Palácio da Bolsa, the stock exchange of the city's Commercial Association, presents a sober neoclassical front to the Praça do Infante D. Henrique, but within lie a glass-domed courtyard, a monumental staircase and the Arab Room, a hall covered from floor to ceiling in Moorish-style ornament.

The site belonged to the Franciscan convent of São Francisco, founded in the thirteenth century; its cloisters burned in 1832 during the Liberal Wars, and in 1841 Queen Maria II gave the ruins to the city's merchants. Construction began in 1842 to designs by the architect Joaquim da Costa Lima Júnior, in a neoclassical style with Palladian influence. Most of the building was finished by 1850, but the interior decoration went on for decades and was completed only in 1910.

At the centre lies the Pátio das Nações, the Courtyard of the Nations, roofed after 1880 with an octagonal dome of iron and glass designed by Tomás Soler. The monumental staircase was built in 1868 by Gustavo Adolfo Gonçalves e Sousa, who also created the building's most celebrated interior, the Arab Room, built between 1862 and 1880 in the Moorish Revival style. It still serves as a reception hall for heads of state visiting Porto. The palace has been a National Monument since 1982, and it stands within the historic centre of Porto, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Getting there

The palace stands on the Praça do Infante D. Henrique in the historic centre of Porto. The nearest airport is Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport (OPO), about 13 km away.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Porto 7The Most Beautiful Places in Northern Portugal 9The Most Beautiful Places in Portugal 63The Most Beautiful Palaces in Portugal 7The Most Beautiful Castles, Palaces and Fortresses in Portugal 15The Most Beautiful Palaces 91The Most Beautiful Castles, Palaces and Fortresses 302

From the encyclopaedia

The Stock Exchange Palace is a historical building in Porto, Portugal. The palace was built in the 19th century by the city's Commercial Association in Neoclassical style. It is located in the Infante D. Henrique Square in the historical centre of Porto, designated World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

41.14137, -8.61569per Wikidata