The Hotel Infante de Sagres in the city of Oporto has, among other civilised amenities, a delightful old lift. It is equipped with that rare thing, an elegant, upholstered bench. Not long ago I found myself firmly ensconced upon it, pleasurably rising and falling past floor after floor with no particular destination in mind.
For one thing, Oporto is a hilly, up-and-down sort of place, and after hours of energetic wandering I found it rather a comfort to find myself mobile without having to move a single, weary muscle. For another, the lift was snug and comfortable, an ideal spot for quiet reflection. And I needed to reflect. I had lost my bearings.
Most cities, no matter how complex, have a dominant signature note, an overall ambience created by history, geography or climate, by architecture, human temperament or professional activity. Cities can be industrially gritty and hardworking, studious and academic, penny-pinching and mercantile, bawdy and pleasure-seeking, theocratic and heaven-seeking. They can be forward or backward looking, introverted or extroverted, cold-shouldered or welcoming. The trouble was that I had wholly failed to get any such handle on Oporto. I felt as lost as I ever had in modern western Europe. Oporto, somehow, was noticeably out of time and place, but in its peculiarity I could discern no unifying theme.
What I needed, I decided, was the height to see things more clearly. And not just the height provided by the Infante de Sagres lift, either. Reluctantly surrendering it, I made way out through the lobby, into the street, and over to the Torre dos Clergios, the tallest church tower in Portugal.
Some 225 puffing steps later, all of Oporto lay at my feet. From here I could see the Atlantic ocean and a vast, constantly changing maritime sky. There were parks and plazas with intricate sidewalk mosaics in black and white cobbles. There were ornate public buildings, and monuments and statues to unfamiliar heros. There were densely packed red-tiled roofs, poor and decrepit in a third-world kind of way, on the sloping hillsides. And rising above them on every hand, massive and stone-carved reminders of what could only have been a glorious age, were the belfries and pinnacles of dozens of churches.
But what stood out most in this landscape, what dominated the entire city, was the green-grey, snaky Douro River that flowed to the sea at the bottom of the city's steep slopes. Everything - hills, roads, buildings, the entire city - seemed to converge upon it. Perhaps down there I would find something that made sense of this bewildering place. And so, step by step, I began my drop down to the Douro. As descents go, I found it even grander than that provided by the Infante de Sagres lift, for it travels down every age this old and richly diverse city has lived through.
Take, for example, the service station that sat on the Praca de Lencastre below my hotel. Most cities can boast a bit of art deco ornamentation. But in Oporto, where the clock stopped ticking somewhere in the 1930s, art deco is about as modern as any building gets. Lying around unselfconscious and unremarked are not only gorgeous art deco cafes, such as the nearby Majestic or Brasileira, but art deco hotels, restaurants, cinemas and even service stations.
But that was only the beginning. The further I headed down towards the river, the closer I approached the mysteries of Oporto's past. What about the old British telephone boxes and red pillar boxes that sit on the sidewalks below the Praca da Liberdade? Or the Feitoria Inglesa, the "English factory", one of numerous Oporto buildings that in Palladian-style reproduce the neo-classical buildings of 18th century England?
The proudest possession of the Passeio Alegre gardens are not, in fact, its gardens, but its British public conveniences, elaborate ceramic urinals imported from England. What brought such incongruous things here.
And what, I wondered, brought the vast wealth that built Oporto's magnificent baroque churches? In the Church of San Francisco, still nearer the water, my jaw dropped at the extent and detail of the rococo gilded wood-carving that dripped from altars, walls, pillars and ceilings.
Over at the Se, the great stone cathedral that looms on a high bluff directly above the river, I left behind the baroque and plunged into an earlier medieval age. The Se itself is of 12th century romanesque construction and looks more like an austere fortress than a cathedral. More inviting were the crowded medieval streets that ran to the foot of the Se.
Here were tall, narrow houses cramped together, their facades intricate compositions of coloured ceramic tiling, narrow iron balconies and hanging laundry swaying in the breeze. Here too were antiquated businesses - old shops with dark interiors, wooden panelling and glass-fronted cabinets; fusty ecclesiastical establishments selling gory crucifixes, soutains and communion chalices; tiny, archaic bars containing strange bottles, hanging hams and whiskery men; antique barber shops where straight blades were being stropped to turn the whiskery men cleanshaven.
Oporto is as remarkable for its human presence as for its monuments and period architecture. Down the stairways and steep cobbled alleys below the Se I plunged towards the water. In few other cities in Europe have such poor, dishevelled and atmospheric quarters remained so long untouched by urban renovation.
There was rusty corrugated iron, strange, dank odours, children spilling from low, cramped quarters to play in narrow streets. But there were touches of southern sensuality - vines growing on whitewashed walls, pots of bright geraniums, sad strains of fado, Portugese folk songs, floating through open windows. And so, at last, I reached the old quays on the Douro and found the element that makes Oporto so uniquely Oporto - the river itself.
The very name of the city is an obvious clue. It was the river that in Roman times encouraged the growth of two trading towns on opposite banks, Portus and Cale - eventually giving the whole country its name. It was the river that saw Prince Henry the Navigator, a native of the city, sending off Oporto caravels to discover new worlds of great wealth. It was the river, too - or at least its banks - that in return gave the world port wine and firmly established both its commercial reputation and English merchants in the city.
Oporto leads to the river, and the river leads inland to further mysteries, many of them alluringly vinous. On the quay before me I spied the Vistadouro, a cruise boat that would head upstream next morning. I would take it. But first I had a journey to make under my own steam, I knew, and began trudging up Oporto's steep hillsides.