Museu Municipal Casa do Infante, Porto

Casa do Infante began as Porto’s royal customs complex in the fourteenth century, collecting duties on riverborne cargo; it also served as a mint and storehouse. The building before you carries the result of repeated alteration: a major seventeenth-century rebuilding kept the courtyard while recasting much of the older structure. Local tradition links this house with the birth of Prince Henry the Navigator in 1394, and its name keeps that connection alive.

Archaeologists uncovered Roman foundations and mosaic paving beneath the complex, revealing an earlier layer of Porto beneath the customs house. Today the municipal museum presents Porto’s story, including a model of the medieval city, alongside the city archives and a specialist library. The stone frontage and arched entrance suit a place made to manage commerce, then repeatedly reshaped to preserve civic memory.