The 20 best art galleries in Porto

Galeria Fernando Santos’s been going for 25 years and was the first to open in Rua Miguel Bombarda, which today is the site of Porto’s main cluster of galleries. It mainly works with established artists, such as Portugal’s own Nikias Skapinakis, Gerardo Burmester and Pedro Cabrita Reis, as well as foreign names such as Antoni Tàpies, Julian Schnabel and Santiago Ydáñez. But there’s room for up-and-coming artists, too.

This spacious gallery has an exceptional view over the River Douro, but the most important thing is its packed agenda of exhibitions of works by both known and emerging artists.

The Tilsitt is one of the newest tenants in the arts quarter. Founded at the beginning of 2020, Tilsitt Gallery is committed to contemporary art and showcases the work of local and international artists, both emerging and established. Throughout the gallery – one of the most beautiful around, by the way – you'll find bronze sculptures by Lothar Vigelandzoon, figurative paintings by Mario Henrique and abstract paintings by Gérard, and a ton of others too.

This may be one of the city’s oldest galleries, but it still has new blood pumping through it. Over the years it has provided a platform for many artists at the start of their careers and has helped to establish many well-known ones.

Despite being relatively new, this gallery has already made its mark in Porto. It stands out for its support for the careers of a range of promising artists, and the chances it has taken have paid off. The space also includes the Kubikulo, a small showcase facing on to the street that houses daring interventions by different artists.

Inaugurated in October 2022, Cor Própria is an extension of the Águas Furtadas gallery, a colourful corner in the Bombarda Shopping Centre that you won't want to leave. This pop-up was born out of the need to give more prominence to the artists living on Rua do Almada, and every month in Cor Própria a theme, colour and artist is chosen. You'll find art, illustration, original ceramics and beautiful stationary by brilliant Portuguese artists.

Specialising in rough, primitive and popular art, with an anthropological focus, Cruzes Canhoto is a gallery that passionately explores the most unusual colours and shapes from the deepest and most remote parts of human nature.

Espaço SP620, in Rua Santos Pousada, is dedicated exclusively to photography, with a cycle called Salut au Monde!, the title of a famous poem by Walt Whitman.

Ana Trabulo and Andrew Winn are the pair behind this space on Rua do Loureiro, where creativity runs wild and free. Here you'll find paintings by Trabulo as well as notebooks, cloth bags, postcards and more, while Andrew Winn specialises in limited-edition linocut designs. But it's not just the works of these two on offer at Squid Ink Works; you'll find the likes of Kasia Harciarek, Pati Naka, Vital Lordelo and João Paulo Figueiredo, and the list continues to grow. 

Galeria Quadrado Azulis is one of the oldest galleries in Porto and owes its name to the well-known work by Almada Negreiros and Amadeo de Souza Cardoso, K4 O Quadrado Azul. From an early stage, it distinguished itself by showcasing new artists, while maintaining regular exhibitions of established ones, from Álvaro Lapa to Alberto Carneiro, and Ângelo de Sousa to Bruno Pacheco. In 2006 he moved down to Lisbon and opened a second gallery in Rua Reinaldo Ferreira.

Galeria Serpente has been open since 1998 and actively promotes the ‘confrontation of ideas’ within contemporary art. Despite the emphasis on photography exhibitions, installations, sculpture, painting and drawing also feature. Previous artists have featured Danilo Pavone, Joana Roberto and José Pastor.

Sismógrafo is on a first floor, and can be easily missed by passers by, but is worth climbing the stairs to check out. Your reward is a series of exhibitions of a more experimental nature than is usual in Porto’s galleries, with works by leading Portuguese and foreign artists.

Before it was a gallery, Galeria Ocupa was a butcher shop. It's now a project by Alexandre Teixeira and Filipa Fernandes, artists and students of Heritage Management and Visual Arts at the Escola Superior de Educação (ESE), it eschews a more traditional white cube format and appropriates the space and tools left behind to exhibit emerging and established creators.

Ó! Galeria specialises in illustration, and its walls are filled with drawings by different artists. There is also a separate exhibition area with regularly changing shows, always by leading artists in illustration, currently one of the most dynamic areas of the art world.

Here you can see exhibitions of drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, illustration, multimedia and anything else that fits between the lines. Openings at Senhora Presidenta are held monthly, and occasionally the curatorship will be handed over to Júlio Dolbeth and Rui Vitorino Santos, the founders of the famous Dama Aflita gallery, which has since closed. You can also buy GUR rugs and find tons of fun stuff in the shop.

Founded in 2017 by Mário Ferreira da Silva and Frederick Lehmann, Lehmann + Silva (no surprise on the name) is located in Bonfim and works to publicise contemporary Portuguese artists on the international art scene and to represent and exhibit international artists in Portugal and abroad. Lehmann + Silva collaborates with emerging and established artists and is divided into two floors, the exhibition space and the project space, where national and international curators are invited to develop research and curatorial projects.

Circus Network, located at 54 Rua do Rosário, is an agency, gallery, shop and co-working space focused on promoting and publicising national culture, especially illustration and urban art. It represents names like Lara Luís, Bruno Lisboa, MynameisnotSEM or Frederico Draw.

RAMPA is an independent curatorial space that brings together artists, curators, researchers, designers and architects to serve as a meeting point between the local and international artistic context.