Porto Cathedral

Porto Cathedral tickets: which one to buy

Entry to the church is free; the cloister and the treasury are the ticket, and it is one of the cheapest in the city. Audio guides are included in some versions. The cloister is the reason to pay: two storeys of Gothic arcading lined with eighteenth-century blue and white azulejo panels, with a staircase by Nicolau Nasoni leading to a terrace over the river. Guided walking tours of the historic centre usually include the cathedral ticket and cost several times it, which buys the context of a city that grew up around this hill.

Tours pairing Porto with Braga or with Santiago de Compostela use the cathedral as a starting point rather than a destination. Nothing needs booking ahead. The terrace in front of the church is free and open at all hours, and gives one of the two best views of Porto, with the Douro below and the Dom Luis bridge to the left. The ticket desk is inside the cloister entrance to the right of the west front, not in the church, which catches out most first-time visitors.

Visiting Porto Cathedral: what to see

The cathedral was begun in the twelfth century on the highest point of the old town and looks it: two squat towers with buttresses, a crenellated roofline and a plain west front with a Romanesque rose window, more fortress than church. Inside, the nave is narrow and barrel-vaulted, one of the first Portuguese buildings to use flying buttresses. The Gothic cloister of the fourteenth century was covered in azulejos in the 1730s, telling the story of Ovid's Metamorphoses and the Song of Songs in blue on white across hundreds of tiles.

The chapel of the Blessed Sacrament holds a silver altarpiece that the city saved from Napoleon's troops by walling it up. In 1387 John I of Portugal married Philippa of Lancaster here, a match that produced Henry the Navigator and sealed the alliance with England that still stands. The Baroque loggia on the north side is Nasoni's, as is much of eighteenth-century Porto. Beside the cathedral stands a granite pillory of the twelfth century, and the bishop's palace next door is now a museum with a separate ticket and a better view of the river than the terrace has.

Porto Cathedral opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily from morning to early evening with a break at midday in some seasons, and shorter hours in winter. The church closes to visitors during mass. The terrace outside is busiest at sunset, when everyone in Porto seems to arrive for the view; the cloister is quiet all day. Porto's rain is frequent from October to April, and the cloister is partly open to the weather. The steep lanes down from the cathedral to the Ribeira waterfront are the oldest part of the city and take twenty minutes on foot, all downhill.

Dress modestly. Photography is allowed. Allow forty-five minutes for church and cloister. The Sao Bento railway station with its tiled hall is five minutes downhill and free, a natural pairing with the azulejos here. Trams and tuk-tuks queue on the terrace all day; the walk up from the Ribeira is steep but short, and the lanes of the Barredo quarter on that climb are the oldest surviving streets in the city.