In the port city of Porto, located along the Douro River estuary in northern Portugal

 "My affection hath an unknown bottom, like the Bay of Portugal."

-- William Shakespeare
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(in northern Portugal) The port city of Porto, also known as Oporto, is the second largest city in Portugal, after Lisbon. It is the capital of the Porto District and one of the Iberian Peninsula's urban areas. Porto city proper, which is the entire municipality of Porto, is small compared to its metropolitan area, with an estimated population of about 250,000 people (while its metropolitan area has around 1.8 million.).
+ Located along the Douro River estuary, Porto is one of the oldest European centers and its core was proclaimed a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1996, as the "Historic Centre of Porto, Luiz I Bridge and Monastery of Serra do Pilar". The historic area is also a National Monument of Portugal. The western part of its urban area extends to the coastline of the Atlantic Ocean.

+ Its settlement dates back many centuries, when it was an outpost of the Roman Empire. Porto was called Portus Cale in Roman times and was earlier a flourishing settlement on the Douro’s south bank; the nomadic Alani tribe later founded the city of Castrum Novum on the north bank. The Visigoths took possession of the site about 540 CE but yielded in 716 to the Moors. In 997 Christian forces recaptured Porto, which for a time became the capital of the counts of Portucalense (northern Portugal) during Moorish rule in the southern part of the kingdom. The Moors again held the city briefly, but in 1092 it was brought under Christian domination. In the 14th century the city became an important port, and Prince Henry the Navigator was born here in 1394. During the Peninsular War, British forces under Arthur Wellesley (later the duke of Wellington) there crossed the Douro, routed the French, and captured the city on May 12, 1809.

+ The contemporary city lies mainly on the Douro’s right (north) bank, sprawling outward from the older riverside district known as the Ribeira. The red-tiled warehouses of the town of Vila Nova de Gaia, where vast quantities of port wine are blended and stored, are on the south bank of the Douro; other suburbs include Matosinhos, Leça da Palmeira, and Aguas Santas to the north and Gondomar and Oliveira do Douro to the southeast. The region’s narrow coastal plain quickly rises eastward to an inland undulating plateau. A mild, moist climate and generally fertile soils have encouraged intensive farming in the region, including winter and summer cereals, vegetables, and tree crops (cork oak and olive). Timber and its associated industries and the production of vinho verde (an effervescent wine) are also important.

+ The Douro River is spanned in central Porto by several bridges, notably the Dom Luís I Bridge, which was built in the 1880s from a design by a disciple of the French civil engineer Gustave Eiffel, and the Maria Pia Bridge (1870s), designed by Eiffel himself. Porto has an airport and is connected with Lisbon by highway and high-speed rail.