Wandering in Porto last spring, I came across this antiquarian bookshop, Livraria Moreira da Costa.  As the sign says, it was founded in 1902.

Livraria Moreira da Costa, an antiquarian bookshop in Porto.

I can’t resist any kind of bookshop, but especially not a secondhand one, and certainly not an antiquarian one.  As I discovered on closer inspection of the shop window, Moreira da Costa is in fact the last-named kind of bookshop.

Antiquarian titles in the window of Moreira da Costa.

Hotel: Pestana Palacio do Freixo, also known as the Pousada do Porto.

Address: Estrada Nacional 108, 4300, Campanha, Porto, Porto e Norte, Portugal (about 4km from the centre of Porto).

Website: http://www.pestana.com/en/hotel/freixo-palace/

Rating: Excellent.

The most famous facade of the Palacio do Freixo.

I stayed at the Palacio for one night at the beginning of April, 2016.  Run by Pestana Hotels, the Palacio is classified as a national monument, and is also a member of Portugal’s national association of pousadas.

Reception: The check-in process was very smooth.  As soon as I entered the lobby, I was ushered to a comfortable chair in front of the reception desk in a chamber next to the Moorish lobby.  Although the formalities took only a few minutes, I was served a small glass of port.  The young man who had first greeted me at the door also showed me to my room.  This was a nice touch and probably necessary because the layout of the Palacio is complicated.

Flower arrangement in the Moorish lobby. Reception is to the left.

Today I’m pleased to bring you Versailles Century’s first house tour, except the house is now a hotel.  I’ll explain.

The most famous facade of the Palacio do Freixo.

The Palacio do Freixo was built around 1750 on the banks of the Douro river near Porto for one Dom Jeronimo de Tavora e Noronha.  Portuguese Wikipedia informs me that he was a wealthy gentleman with estates in the Douro valley.   He was also the heir of the Dean of the Porto Cathedral, and was instrumental in bringing Nicolau Nasoni (see the previous post), the Italian artist and architect who designed the Palacio, to Porto in 1725 to work on projects for the archdiocese.  Dom Geronimo left the Palacio to his younger brother, a knight in the Order of Malta, whose descendants sold it in the 19th century to a rich merchant, who built a soap factory next door.  It passed through several more hands and uses before finally being declared a national monument in 1910.  The Porto municipal administration acquired it 1986 and extensive restoration work was undertaken between 2000 and 2003.  Since 2009, the Pestana Group has operated it as a pousada, or heritage hotel.

I take these to be Dom Jeronimo de Tavora e Noronha’s arms.

We’ll take a tour of the Palacio as a historic house in this post, and in the next one I’ll review it as a hotel.

Porto, Portugal’s second city, was founded in Roman times, but came into its own during the Versailles Century.

Porto’s historic heart with the cathedral and archbishop’s palace on the hilltop.

Brazilian gold flowing across the Atlantic after the discovery of the precious yellow metal in Minas Gerais in the 1690s, combined with the boom in the port wine trade after the signing of the Methuen Treaty with Great Britain in 1703, made Porto rich.  Much of the loot was spent on spectacular churches.  Modern visitors to the city will find the built heritage of the northern Portuguese Baroque all around them.  The star exhibits are the buildings designed by the transplant Nicolau Nasoni (1691-1773), an all-around talent who arrived from Italy to execute some paintings for the archbishop and stayed for the rest of his life, undertaking not only paintings, but interior design and architecture.