Railway station Porto, Portugal

PORTO’S SÃO BENTO RAILWAY STATION

Posted on April 1, 2015 by Gail at Large

I photograph São Bento Station almost every time I pass through (scroll down for more posts about the station), to catch it in different light, to search for details I hadn’t noticed before. It’s not a big station, but there is an incredible amount of interior detail which deserves multiple viewings to capture properly. The large panels of azulejos are an incredible sight.

For a backgrounder, the Portuguese page on Wikipedia is extensive. Run it through a translator, as the English version is paltry by comparison.

Travel and Leisure magazine puts São Bento Station in their list of the World’s Most Beautiful Train Stations (October 2011):

São Bento Station, Porto, Portugal
While the exterior is certainly beautiful—and brings to mind 19th-century Parisian architecture with its mansard roof and stone façade—it is the front hall that will make you gasp. The walls are covered with 20,000 splendid azulejo tin-glazed ceramic tiles, which took 11 years for artist Jorge Colaço to complete.

Zero in on the blue and white tile panels, which depict the history of transportation as well as historic battles and artistic renderings of 14th-century King João I and Queen Philippa of Lancaster by the city’s cathedral.

We took a closer look at the station last Saturday, in part because the City of Porto is running a cultural project called Locomotiva until June, adjacent to the station. But really, we don’t need an excuse to go because the station is always worth a stop, even if we don’t need to catch a train.