On the Trail of Street Art

Luckily we only had to walk about fifty metres from the restaurant to our meeting place at São Bento train station for our street art tour with Afonso. There were supposed to be 7 of us, but only 5 turned up. So, after waiting for about 10 minutes, we headed off to explore the city of Porto and see some wonderful street art. We were joined on the tour by Jennifer and Jean from Canada, and Sylvie from France.

The first thing Afonso showed us we would’ve walked past without even noticing it, as you have to look up. This project was the brainchild of
Miguel Januário, a Porto street artist. It was backed by the city, and involved many people contributing to the work by making tiles which adorn the building of a rock club called BARRACUDA - Clube De Roque. All the tiles respond to the question - “Who are you Porto?”

Afonso took us through the narrow and winding streets of Porto, pointing out the art work of CostaH, Hazul, Miguel Januário, Vhils, Guaté Mao, The Kuhn Kid, Gregor and my name is Sam. It was a great afternoon that finished with a coffee at a really great antique/bric brac/coffee and wine bar. The two people who didn’t turn up bumped into us about half way through the tour - Caryn and Christopher, Americans from Long Island who had got caught up in traffic on their way into town from Braga. It was serendipitous that Caryn heard Afonso explaining a piece of art to us on the bridge, and so asked if he was leading the street art tour. They joined us for the second half and were lots of fun.

There was so much wonderful art to see (and take photos of), so I have included an additional instalment on street art to try and cover the broad range of work we saw.Read more