3-Hour Porto Jewish Heritage Walking Tour with Local Guide

Ricardo was great and extremely knowledgeable! He speaks as well as a university professor. Highly recommended! Great experience.

While titled the Jewish Heritage tour, sadly there is not much Jewish heritage to see. Our tour guide Pedro, was very well informed, respectful and honest about his country’s history and the treatment of Jews. The tour covered the old city in Porto which in and of itself was beautiful. We saw some plaques commemorating the Jewish neighborhoods and the country’s regret for trying to erase them. Our guide showed us several carved crosses etched outside of homes he suspects were made by Jews living there who were required to denounce their own faith and declare themselves Christians. Unfortunately, there are no records to verify that Jews ever lived there.

We had a charming guide named Pedro who let us know from the outset that there is really not that much of Jewish Heritage remaining to be seen in central Porto. That said, he showed us what he could and shared interesting facts about the history of the Jews in Porto. He made it as engaging as he could. Because there were only two of us, and we could walk all the steep steps and steep lanes quickly, we finished the tour in under two hours. He was happy to guide us to other monuments but we had already seen all the major sites so we declined. He walked us back to our hotel and we continued chatting so we were with Pedro closer to 2.5 hours but we could have wrapped up sooner. But we enjoyed talking with him so this was fine. The tour was sufficiently enjoyable and educational that I’m glad we took the tour but I imagine some travelers would find it disappointing. Note that the Porto synagogue is not part of this walking tour as it is quite a distance away from the central Porto area. This had been made clear in the Viator website before we booked.