Porto, Portugal

PortoBay Teatro

Price per night from$137.79

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR127.36), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Style

Drama queen

Setting

Arty theatre district

Set in a theatre-filled patch of Porto, PortoBay Teatro was made for the stage. Showy spotlights, an opulent use of black and gold, and cabinets of costumes make it a natural performer.

Smith Extra

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A bottle of port and some chocolates

Facilities

Photos PortoBay Teatro facilities

Need to know

Rooms

74, including seven suites.

Check–Out

Noon, but flexible at half a day’s cost. Earliest check-in, 2pm.

Prices

Double rooms from £115.68 (€135), including tax at 6 per cent. Please note the hotel charges an additional local city tax of €2.00 per person per night on check-out.

More details

Rates include tax and buffet breakfast. Dinner inclusive rates include breakfast and a three-course dinner (not including drinks).

Also

Guests dining at the hotel’s restaurant are treated to 10 per cent off the bill, and a glass of port in the bar.

At the hotel

Free WiFi throughout. In rooms, flatscreen TV, minibar and Rituals bath products.

Our favourite rooms

Stage a dress rehearsal in the elegantly neutral rooms, decked out with oversized mirrors, vast beds and seductive bathrooms encased in smoked glass (with modesty-preserving blinds for quick costume changes). The top floor Suite has an enormous terrace overlooking the theatre and a large living area from which to enjoy a tipple or two from the room service menu, or sink into the roll top bath tub of the Audience Room.

Packing tips

Elegant eveningwear for theatre nights, and a Portuguese phrasebook to try and make sense of them.

Also

One of the Tribune rooms is accessible by lift and has an adapted bathroom for disabled guests.

Children

Cots are free, and extra beds can be added to the Junior Suite or Suite categories. Babysitting can be arranged with a day’s notice, and the restaurant has a dedicated kids’ menu.

Food and Drink

Photos PortoBay Teatro food and drink

Top Table

For prime views, sit overlooking the courtyard; for somewhere shady and romantic, head for the back of the room.

Dress Code

Costume drama: opulent golds, reds and blacks.

Hotel restaurant

Under the guiding hand of head chef Nuno Miguel, Il Basilico offers a menu inspired by classic Italian comfort food. Set under a glass ceiling, Mediterranean decor, statement lighting and plenty of plants make for a relaxed and airy space with which to graze on wood-fired pizzas, pastas, risottos and creamy, artisan desserts. 

Hotel bar

Settle in to the stalls at Il Basilico bar with a glass of well-picked port and some authentic Fado rhythms.

Last orders

During the week, breakfast is served from 7am until 10:30am; at weekends, it’s 7.30am until 11am. Lunch is on offer from 12.30pm until 3pm, and dinner is between 7.30pm and 10.30pm.

Room service

Snacks and drinks can be brought to your room from 7am until 10:30pm.

Location

Photos PortoBay Teatro location
Address
PortoBay Teatro
84 Rua Sá da Bandeira
Porto
4000-427
Portugal

PortoBay Teatro is in the centre of Porto, not far from the river, and between the Jardins do Palácio de Cristal and Jardins de Nova Sintra.

Planes

Porto is the nearest airport, 15 kilometres away. Fly direct from London Gatwick or from across Europe, South America and the USA. Call our helpful Smith24 team to book your flights.

Trains

From São Bento station, 200 metres from the hotel, trains go all over the country, including to Lisbon, Braga and Coimbra; for details, see www.cp.pt. The nearest metro stations are Bolhão and São Bento. From the airport, take line E in the direction of Estádio do Dragão.

Automobiles

The hotel is in the city centre, so parking will set you back €16 a day. Drive south from the airport, using the A4 and E01.

Worth getting out of bed for

Pop along to one of the many theatres in the area for a performance in Portuguese; try Teatro Rivoli. Further afield, take a trip out to the Douro Valley’s port vineyards, then head back to the city’s many cellars to sample some more. Livraria Lello is one of the world's most beautiful bookshops, with gilded ceilings and grand staircases. On the other end of the scale, Casa da Música is equally beautiful but in Brutalist style. The whole space is dedicated to musical training and performance and you can catch concerts here. The best way to enjoy the city's sunshine is a wander in the 19th-century Jardins do Palácio de Cristal, manicured gardens from which you can see the Duoro River sparkle.

Local restaurants

Hidden at the back of the city’s stock exchange, O Commerical on Rua Ferreira Borges has more romantic river views and offers an elegant, but not over-priced, experience.

Local cafés

Head to Café Majestic on Rua Santa Catarina to try the rabanadas – a Portuguese take on French toast that’s popular at Christmas.

Local bars

Down the road from the hotel, there are lots of bars and clubs lining the Galerias de Paris; we like the cocktails at Twins 1974.

Reviews

Photos PortoBay Teatro reviews
Benji Wilson

Anonymous review

By Benji Wilson, Square-eyed scribbler

The mere mention of a ‘themed’ hotel should be enough to make even the most travel-hardened Smith hotfoot it to the sanctuary of the nearest Four Seasons. Visions of custodial sentences in Disneyland are hard to erase (‘No, I would not like a Donald Duck nightlight turned on in my Mouse House’).

Well, full disclosure: PortoBay Teatro in Porto has a theme, and as the name suggests, the theme is theatre. All the world’s a stage and we are merely players, carrying hand luggage and under-100ml liquids. On this basis Mrs Smith and I approached Teatro with trepidation, imagining we would be met at the door by a Portuguese Brian Blessed in a puffy shirt, followed by dinner served in three acts.

We needn’t have worried. Truth be told, the drama thing is a bit of a red herring – more of a dress code than a straitjacket – borne of the fact that Teatro is situated smack bang in Porto city centre, in theatreland. The references extend as far as the colour palette and some of the decor. The tones are all burnt ochre and oxidised metal, with, and floor-length heavy curtains throughout. By ‘theatre’ they mean mid-century Hollywood glamour, not jazz hands, masks and musicals: the walls of the restaurant are covered with a huge black-and-white mural of a cinema audience staring back at you; there are costume racks by the lifts and the carpets are patterned with silhouettes of old-school arc lights.

Too much? Nope, just about right. Because the big, overarching theme is offset by deft little touches like your own notebook to write down ‘O Que Es Mais Gostei’ (What I Liked Most) for highlights of your stay, and stage lights that come on as you shuffle past. Nothing about Teatro is overblown: yes, there’s a grand, statement bathroom but it’s statement is ‘nice bathroom’ rather than ‘if you dare try the wetroom in three minutes the sink area will look like a challenge from Celebrity Wipeout’. It all means that whatever you think of the Teatro’s style, you can’t doubt its substance.

Considering the hotel’s surrounds, it all makes sense; Porto in summer is why-did-I-bother-with-the-raincoat hot. So the autumnal lighting and tinted glass surfaces are actually welcome relief from 30 degree-plus temperatures outside. Mrs S, I should add, wasn’t entirely in agreement, saying the perpetual dusk meant it was hard to do her make-up. I pointed out that if the lighting was low it meant less need for cosmetics in the first place. We argued the toss over a complimentary glass of port in the bar.

Did I mention port? Whereas in Britain the viscous plummy stuff conjures up images of gout-ridden old duffers dozing in St James clubs, in Porto it’s the very lifeblood of the city. At night the far bank of the Douro is illuminated with the names of the age-old wineries – Graham’s, Croft, Sandeman – splashed on the rooftops like the titles of the week’s big new movies. The next morning we headed over to Gaia, on the South bank, where the port houses reside. The restaurants (we ate at Taylor’s) serve some of the best food in the city.

Not the best, though – a recommendation from Teatro’s wonderfully efficient concierge plus a hearty nod from a couple of taxi drivers took us to O Paparico that evening, which is about 10 minutes drive from the centre. As most of Porto is walkable a cab ride is a black mark, but for your trouble you’ll get exquisite, homely, Portuguese cuisine.

Now, a note: without sounding a complete culinary philistine, they do a thing here where a selection of small dishes are put on your table when you arrive. We presumed this was the starter equivalent of the dessert trolley – a beauty parade with one eventual winner. So with our absence of Portuguese the morsels sat and sat, until the waiter suggested maybe, what with this being a restaurant, we might like to eat something. He gracefully smothered our embarrassment with drink recommendations with every course, and seemed blithely unconcerned by how many glasses we had of each.

If you’ve been doing the maths (free port, more port, bottomless wine tab and did I mention that nice glass of after-dinner port?), you’ll understand my appreciation of one particular detail the next morning: a proper espresso machine in our room. ‘Proper’ meaning coffee that doesn’t taste like it’s been pipetted from a puddle on a garage forecourt. It gave us just the energy required to make it down to a no-limits buffet breakfast. Only fly in our ointment? Those tables in the courtyard that look like enticing sun-spots are just that – but they are also an enticing smoke-spot to those with a weakness for tobacco.

But this is the only flaw, and of course it’s not one to the puffers out there. Consulting my little Teatro notebook I noted that I only wrote down one other potential gripe: a lot of card-swiping was required. Entry to the room, the hotel and the lifts all demand a flash of plastic. And anyway, this micro-grumble was soon crossed out. The theatrical vibe started to take effect: I found myself swiping away with increasingly elaborate gestures, like a Shakespearean hero dismissing an idle courtier; or maybe Clint Eastwood, lightning-quick on the draw. And my leading lady, Mrs Smith? She just started taking the other lift.

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Price per night from $137.79