To be clear, we are talking Portugal, so there is no shortage of refinement overall – as a matter of fact, characteristic style and fine detail are always present here in subtle and surprising ways. Expressive vintage signs above bakery window frame moldings are of superb quality, their decorative handwriting embossed or engraved in gold leaf on deep black lacquer plays off against colorful azulejo tiles and white limestone blocks of the facade, and against the black and white limestone cobbles of patterned calcada pavement in front of the window. This calligraphic sophistication follows you from store front to store front and is a true piece de resistance of Portugal’s authenticity, character, and craftsmanship – street graphics here can be outright stunning, rightfully stealing the show from other elements competing for your visual attention. I personally think there should be organized graphic art tours focusing at a minimum on the vintage store and workshop signs of Lisbon and Porto.
Signage is an important and nearly always overlooked artifact of street furniture and urban built environment – this is what connects the building architecture to the unfolding street scene. Signage is commercial and therefore volatile and subject to fortune of its retail hosts, it is utilitarian – or can be – and thus under budget pressures, it is a dinosaur steamrolled by technology where local real time appeal to passersby senses has been replaced by Instagram and google maps. And that’s why top notch vintage signage must be protected. Vast majority of signage in general is by individual shop owner driven by self-interest and not always of enlightened variety, much of it is unregulated and tacky, tasteless, overpowering, and in direct conflict with the facade’s architecture and the look of the street. This is why finding a place where the foresight of the local commercial and artistic community to work together to create signage that enhances and improves rather than detracts and destroys is such a delight.
OK, all former imperial capitals and worldly metropolises have superb signage and storefront detail – the trelliswork, awnings, and terraces of corner Paris buildings are unrivaled, and bringing up the storefronts of former Imperial purveyors of everything from chocolate to crystal on Vienna’s Graben in any comparative context is just silly. But I am talking historic storefronts with display windows of noble proportions and those on a humbler scale, I am talking fixtures, frames and elaborate signs of the archway, the space around the bay-wide glass vitrine – not the artful placement of merchandise or dress of mannequins on display. This qualifier should narrow it down and shift attention further south, to capital cities and merchant city states formerly at the pinnacle of maritime and mercantile glory, on Europe’s Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts.
The palette of Portugal’s street mosaic is vibrant, colorful, and intense – in direct contract to the melancholy of the place. It is one of deeply carved white marble and sunlit limestone, of large-scale contrasting black & white pavement designs stitched together into a continuous block-long horizontal wallpaper one cobblestone at a time, of cheerfully painted Manueline and Pombaline facades, of exteriors clad in bright glazed decorative azulejo tiles and multicolor patterned mosaics. Portugal’s landscapes among the most varied and pleasing, the greenery of rolling hills punctuated by characteristic whitewashed, red tile roofed villages more scenic than the much admired clay and dirt colors of much of rustic central Italy. Its royal palace gardens, hilltop castles, monastic complexes retreats quite plentiful and truly authentic, its patronage of artistic legacy and the built environment quietly top notch, its historical monuments impeccably restored.
The outer architectural dress of Portugal’s streets, enclosed squares and open spaces is stunning – dignified and noble if not regal, well-proportioned, strictly executed, exact, expressive. The legacy of its sculptors, master masons, stone carvers, and goldsmiths is plentiful, world class, their public works more eye catching in their harmony of form and sophistication of detail than in most world capitals of larger caliber, ex Rome, Vienna and Paris. Portugal’s ecclesiastic and secular interiors a true repository of its former discoveries, glories, and colonial riches, with more azulejo, its display of gold more ostentatious and of higher content than elsewhere with the possible exception of India. Its cities deeply panoramic, striking near-perfect balance between sweeping views and gems of small forms. Its cityscapes and skylines rise in a picture-perfect postcard view from a multitude of miradouro viewpoints scattered across its cities’ rooftops, park terraces, street side belvederes, elevators, funiculars, city hilltop castles and cathedrals. Urban Portugal’s center grids and historic bookstores among Europe’s oldest and most tasteful, still serving their original purpose, its dense maze of streets, nooks and crannies unusually charming and hilly, and even the grittiest, poorest, and most forgotten – if not foresaken – of its inner neighborhoods are perfectly safe and sort of romantic in their sleepy melancholy.
Add to this the flavors of its gastronomy evolving beyond olive oil, garlic and spice, the indigenous wine culture of its regions that is not always intuitive to navigate, the relaxed and endearing sound of its language, and last but definitely not least, the work ethics, tenacity, friendliness, and openness of its people – and Portugal’s travel and vacation infrastructure rises into an ecosystem of authentic flavors and friendly experiences ready to quietly bombard your senses. An ecosystem that offers something special in this rapidly accelerating world, an ecosystem that is hard to beat even by the standards increasingly connected and demanding world, one that can go toe to toe and nose to nose with the best of the Mediterranean and core Roman Catholic Europe. As often the case in Latin European countries, local travels make you realize the true value of coffee, wine, and edible delicacies, free from the hype typical of consuming Western countries – the Portuguese experience, from food & wine to sensory bombardment, is available at 25 to 30 cents in the dollar you would be otherwise spending in NYC where upon my return I begrudge every cup of espresso, every glass of wine, every meal as ‘rent pass through.’
This is after all the country that has delivered the pinnacle of achievement in Renaissance cartography, sea faring, learning, and the arts. This is the country that produced the very best of the great discoverers who, unlike their larger neighbors to the East, rarely miscalculated, were never misguided about goals set, and did not have to resort to cover up for wrong destinations reached. This is the country that gave us Europe’s first large-scale orthogonal city grid – even if Marquis de Pombal’s post-quake uniform central plan, standardized design, and prefabricated construction were inspired by Christopher Wren’s forsaken designs for reconstruction of London after the Great Fire and by rectilinear expansion of Turin for the Dukes of Savoy by Vitozzi and Castellamonte. The country that produced the unique beauty of Moorish mosaics and the intricate cobblestone calcada patterns, that crafted for future generations an immense repository of gilded carvings of the most ostentatious kind and of the highest gold content, that created the most articulated terracotta roof tile designs one comes across while traveling throughout Europe. Few would argue that those world class discoverers, city planners, master masons, and goldsmiths were somehow lacking in attention to detail, artistic taste, or desire to outperform, outdo, outmatch.
Portugal is a global brand for those seeking affordable sun – but also for slow time, slow sightseeing, slow food. It is uniformly viewed as pretty, colorful and low key, no one would argue. People are friendly, good looking, with a good sense of humor, service is quite good by European or any standards. More importantly, with little top-down pressure, no must-see lists, few organized culture tours, it offers virtually unlimited sunshine, a string of rocky surf beaches – all with less heat and humidity than on the Mediterranean – the California of Europe albeit with less economic, demographic and trendsetting weight to throw around next to its cultural superiors to the N and E. Even better. Whether you seek R&R or are an avowed foodie and art hound, Portugal has plenty for you, and will leave a lasting impression.
The cinematic backdrop of Porto, Lisbon, Mafra, Nazare, Douro is paradise for the picture-taker, a life-size stage set purpose-built for the freelancer, the blogger, the photography hound. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that Leica sited its Iberian Peninsula’s sole flagship store on a side street in Porto’s 18th century commercial center – I like to think so although a more practical underlying explanation is the presence of Leica’s regional factory and service center right outside Porto owing to the region’s qualified and entrenched component supply chain workforce.
The old cliche that ‘Porto is where people work, Coimbra where they study and Lisbon where they party’ holds approximately true but the boundaries and ambitions are blurring. Overall Portugal certainly values life work balance. Its cities are remarkably safe, and low wages, general affordability, quality of life, and ease of living simply are drawing in talented entrepreneurs, hence the renaissance of the restaurant scene and the buzzing foodie and bar culture, with all collateral benefits.
It is no wonder then that travel and tourism is booming in Portugal. And not only: it is among the world’s most dynamic industries, growing twice as fast as the global GDP as low airfares help lift the masses from China’s, Russia’s and America’s hinterlands, an effect echoed by a pull by popular destination cities on their own provinces spurring inward migration and investment. Portugal’s own tourism industry grew 13% YoY last year, nearly twice the global travel industry average. Take the country’s overweight exposure to this sector – nearly double the N American average and higher % of the economy than Italy’s – and and even if the rest of Portugal’s sectors are treading water tourism alone has secured a respectable 2% GDP growth for the country’s economy. There is nothing like the excitement of early rebound at a nostalgic, atmospheric place like Portugal, after years of recession and austerity, that positive rate of change makes creative energy flow and wets the appetites of well healer locals.
