Dom Luis Bridge

After our 3 samplings of Port (which we shared!) we walked up over 100 steps to the upper level of this Bridge offering nice views of the Douro River. Pedestrians and street cars are on the upper level, autos and pedestrians on the lower. Lots of tour boats going up and down the river

If the Clerigos Tower isn't the iconic image of Porto, this bridge is. The Dom Luís I Bridge is a double-deck metal arch bridge that spans the River Douro between the cities of Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia. At its construction, its 172m span was the longest of its type in the world.

In 1879, Gustave Eiffel presented a project to construct a new bridge over the Douro, with a high single deck in order to facilitate ship navigation. This project was rejected due to dramatic growth of the urban population, which required a re-thinking of the limits of a single-deck platform.

A competition was initiated in November 1880, in order to construct a double-deck metal bridge, the public work was awarded to the Belgian Société de Willebroek, from Brussels, administrated by Théophile Seyrig, a disciple of Gustave Eiffel.Read more