Porto Customs is up for National Monument Designation

The process to designate Porto Customs Building as a National Monument has already begun. The Directorate-General for Cultural Patrimony (DGPC) wants to designate the riverfront building in Miragaia, designed by the French architect Jean Colson, hired in Paris by the Portuguese statesman and engineer Fontes Pereira de Melo. 

The Customs Building was built in the nineteenth century and it hosts a Congress Centre and the Museum of Transports.

The Official Gazette of Portugal gives notice of "the intention, by the DGPC, to submit to the Assistant Secretary of State for Cultural Patrimony the designation of the monument as of national interest and thereby as a National Monument (NM), as well as the outer crane, located at the Rua Nova da Alfândega".

The buildings sits in the Porto Historic Centre, recognized by UNESCO as a World heritage, in 1996. It was renovated under the direction of the Pritzker-awarded architect Eduardo Souto de Moura. It comprises the Museum of Transport and Communication, founded on 21 February 1992.

A bit of history

Porto Customs was established following a governmental decree on 18 July 1834, the North General-Administration for Customshouses (Administração Geral das Alfândegas do Norte).

The building was abandoned by 1987, with the rise of road and rail cargo overtaking river traffic as the main source of freight traffic. On 27 March 1987, the Council of Ministers, under resolution 16/87 established that the "new" customshouse, would become the museological centre for the Porto Museum for Land Transport (Museu dos Transportes Terrestres do Porto).

The three-story building's main facade is oriented to the south and it comprises a rectangular plan, divided into four articulated-wings, covered in different types of tile.