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While Porto has fewer museums than Lisbon, it is home to the Museu Nacional de Soares dos Reis (“Soares dos Reis National Museum“), founded by King Pedro IV in the 19th century, which showcases Portuguese artworks. Including a fine collection of sculptures created by António Soares dos Reis, a famous Portuguese sculptor for whom the museum was renamed.
We got there by bus and shank’s mare. Which allowed us to admire some colorful buildings.
As well as some beautiful tilework.
True to its name, the museum hosted a lot of beautiful sculptures, not all of them by Soares dos Reis.
There’s something about sculpture that grabs me more powerfully than “mere” paintings. Is it the three dimensionality? I’m not sure. But I always enjoy checking them out!
Not all the sculptures were life size. There were many busts, as well.
I’ve always been amazed at how sculptors can make what is solid rock or metal look like it’s a flowing liquid.
You can almost feel the wind with this one!
As well as sense the wry outlook of this gentleman.
Not all of the sculptures were, well, monumental. Some were just plain whimsical!
The museum wasn’t just sculptures and statues, of course. There were quite a few paintings, too, a number of which depicted scenes from around Porto or related to fishing.
The holdings cover quite a few schools of art, including what I think of as modern or abstract.
I particularly liked this view of one of the bridges over the Douro. If I recall correctly, it’s the Pont Luis bridge that today is a major tourist attraction.
One of the more intriguing, and novel (at least to me), technologies used to create “paintings” is illustrated by this piece. These are actually quite small, and the result of firing glazes of some sort on metal backing. The intricacy and detail is impressive!
While there was less furniture in this museum than some of the others we’d visited, they still had some beautiful examples.
As well as some of the most beautiful umbrellas I’ve ever seen. Can’t vouch for how well they’d work in the rain, though.
After leaving the museum, and grabbing a quick bite, we made our way down to the riverfront to grab an obligatory boat ride (I think Porto requires every tourist to take at least one before leaving).
Along the way we saw another intensely colorful building…and navigated some of the steepest steps we’d encountered throughout our trip!
The boat ride was a lot of fun! We got see things we hadn’t come across in our wanderings…and it was refreshing cool to boot.
There were also some…interesting watercraft out and about.
One thing, though: most of the boat rides are advertised as “the Five Bridge Tour”, because they cover a section of the Douro where you can see the five bridges that cross it.
However, Porto never seems to be satisfied with the bridges it has. It regularly adds new ones…which must force the recreation of a lot of advertising material!