The Arab Hall
Granada on the Douro in gold and arabesque.
Manuel de Sousa — Public domain · Michael Gaylard from Horsham, UK — CC BY 4.0 · lumoplank — CC0 · David Stanley from Nanaimo, Canada — CC BY 4.0
Europe's orientalism vogue after the Alhambra's publications — but Porto had its own true thread: an old Mediterranean-Atlantic trading city long tied to Morocco and the East, wanting a hall fit to receive the world, it chose the age's most splendid taste. The result: the city's grandest official room speaks Arabic in ornament — and receives world leaders in it still.
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The Bolsa Palace is Porto's merchant answer to royal palaces: built by the traders' association (1842) as exchange and seat worthy of a self-made city — solemn neoclassic around the glazed Nations' Court, roofed with Porto's trading partners' arms. Its summit is the Arab Hall: eighteen years of ornament (1862-80) after Granada's Alhambra — gold, arabesque and Arabic inscriptions covering every centimetre (among them greetings to the Sultan, here and there copied reversed — history smiles) — the city's official reception hall to this day, where the Arab visitor stands in a moment like no other. Visits run as an obligatory half-hour guided tour (languages rotating) through the commercial court and Gustave Eiffel's old office — and golden São Francisco next door (a tonne of carved gold inside) is the ticket's natural pair.
Granada on the Douro in gold and arabesque.
The trading arms in glass above.
Rua Ferreira Borges, 4050-253 Porto