PortoBay Flores

Rua das Flores runs down from São Bento station towards the river, pedestrianised and lined with restored facades, and it has become the most walked street in Porto. Number 27 is a small palace roughly five hundred years old, and PortoBay took it on along with a new building constructed behind it.

The architect Samuel Torres de Carvalho had to make one work with the other, and the seams are worth noticing. The facade keeps its heavy wooden doors, triangular pediments over the windows, wrought-iron balconies and a 16th-century coat of arms cut into the stone. The old stables are now the entrance. The granite staircase and floor slabs were restored rather than replaced. An old kitchen oven survives as the physical link between the palace and the new wing.

Between the two buildings there is a granite-paved courtyard, and in it a small baroque chapel from the 18th century, which almost nobody outside the hotel knows is there.

There are 66 rooms and suites, and which building you are in matters more than the category. Palace rooms are traditional, with the original proportions. New-wing rooms are modern and minimal, and the higher ones have the better views over the city. Some suites are split-level. Others look into the courtyard.

Downstairs there is a restaurant, a bar opening onto Rua das Flores, a reading room with a fireplace, and the Mandalay spa with sauna, steam room and gym. The indoor pool sits beneath a skylight, which in a converted palace in a dense old city is a genuine luxury.

On position: the Misericórdia church is next door, São Bento station four minutes, the cathedral and Clérigos tower about five each, and the Ribeira ten minutes downhill. Note that breakfast is a surcharge rather than included, and the hotel does not take pets.