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Our street — ‘Rua de Belomonte’ — was laid by Dominican friars and started to be called by its current named in the XVI (16th) century.
At the time, it would have been a crossroads located just short of the Largo de São João Novo.
The Belmonte azulejo tile pattern (after which the street was named) can still be seen on some of the buildings, where it has survived to this day…
Despite not being that long, the street that goes up and down holds some treasures, such as the ‘Escovaria de Belomonte’, one of the oldest businesses in the city of Porto. And probably unique in the whole Iberian Peninsula.
We can also find numerous buildings from the 17th and 18th century, with the ‘Pacheco Pereira’‘s being the most famous one, as it represents one of the finest examples of Porto’s civil architecture from the 18th century.
The building once hosted one of the centers of the Artistic School of Oporto (Porto’s higher-education School of Arts), right next to the B28 Apartments.
Nowadays, it’s being trasnformed into a hotel.
At the start of Rua de Belomonte (Belomonte Street), next to Largo de S. Domingos, begins the extensive stairway of Vitória (Escadaria da Vitória).
In spite being a bit of a challenge to climb, it is, on the other hand, one of the fastest and most direct pathways that connect the low and high parts of ‘morro da Vitória’ (Vitória Viewpoint) .
It’s also from these stairs that you are able to contemplate one of the most panoramic views over the medieval side of Porto.
All the while, this is one area where jewish presence has endured to this day.
In fact, the toponomy preserves that historic memory and that ethnic heritage of peoples, regions and cultures that make up our city.
And part of Porto has also been forged, over the course of centuries, by an extreme and important community of jews that, since the 14th century, were forbidden to live in ‘morro da Sé‘, hence they were transferred to ‘morro do Olival‘.
And thus the Jewish quarter of Porto was born, on top of which the new synagogue was built.
By the end of the 15th century, the Jews were definitively expelled from the city, and the country, following the Inquisition. But, symptomatically, the stairs that led to the synagogue through the Jewish quarter, the renamed Escadas da Vitória, are still called ‘Escadas da “Esnoga“‘.
Source: Joel Cleto, in obradouro blog
After reading about our street, discover also the story of how B28 Apartments became our home.
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