Yellow luck in Porto by Opmeer Reports

Porto tells its stories not with words, but with walls. With layers of paint that flake away yet remain, with ornamental ironwork that rusts but never loses its elegance, with street signs that whisper of streets that have borne the same names for centuries. This façade on Rua do Barredo — the old Rua da Manceba — is just such a story.'And it is one you will not soon forget. Above a Baroque niche, once dedicated to the Senhor da Boa Fortuna, that name is still engraved in the stone. The Lord of Good Fortune. The ornamentation beneath is weathered yet beautiful — a blue-grey patina on carved stucco, a lattice window, a little lantern that has long since ceased to burn but still guards its place. The ochre-yellow façade around it flakes and glows, steeped in the warm Portuguese light, whilst a small wrought-iron balcony with potted plants and twisting decorative balusters lends the whole an almost theatrical intimacy. This is Porto as it has always been: defiantly beautiful, proud of its scars, unshakeable in its charm. Every crack in the wall is a year, every layer of paint a generation. And yet there is something joyful about this scene — the bright yellow colour, the green of the plants, the name that stands above all else like a promise.