Away from the river-side and the immediate surroundings of the cathedral, Oporto has little to show in the form of architectural quaintness. A busy, bustling place of modern-looking houses for the most part, the streets dominated by the indispensable electric tramways, casting scorn upon the lumbering ox wains that alone compete with them. Yet the city has some striking points that should not be missed. The view is very fine, for instance, from the top of the main modern shopping thoroughfare, the Rua de S. Antonio, which swoops down suddenly like a giant switchback to the Praça de Dom Pedro, the centre of the city, and then as the Rua dos Clerigos soars aloft again as suddenly to another eminence crowned by the extraordinary tower of the Church of the Clerigos, one of the loftiest spires in Portugal. The effect, looking up on either side from the Praça de Dom Pedro, is as curious as any streetscape of its kind in Europe. The Praça de Dom Pedro itself, crowded almost day and night with people, busy and idle, is a typical Portuguese “place,” paved, as most of them are, by the strange wave pattern in black and white stone mosaic that gives to the Praça de Dom Pedro in Lisbon (the Rocio) the English name of “rolling motion square.”
From the Praça de Dom Pedro in Oporto, leading downward towards the river-side, is the famous street of the old city called Rua das Flores, where now, as for centuries past, the gold and silver filigree jewelry for which Oporto is famous is made and sold in a score of dark old-fashioned little shops; and still farther down is the Praça do Comercio, with a striking statue amidst the flower-beds of Portugal’s national hero, Prince Henry the Navigator. In this square stands, too, the principal architectural boast of modern Oporto, the Exchange, of which the interior is really grandiose in the florid style so beloved by the Portuguese. The elaborate high-relief carvings prevalent in Portugal are usually executed in soft marble-like limestone, which hardens with exposure to the air; but here in the Bolsa of Oporto the intricate festoons and ingenious caprices that stand out everywhere in relief on walls, pillars, and staircases are carved out of the solid grey granite of which the edifice is built, as if out of defiance the most difficult material had been sought. Some of the fine apartments, especially the Tribunal of commerce, are beautifully decorated in frescoes by Salgado, in style much resembling those of Lord Leighton; and the great ballroom is a gorgeous hall in the brilliant gold and coloured arabesques of the Alhambra.