Since 2015
The story of Ilha Cardoso
First, what is an ilha?
Porto's hidden streets, behind the front doors
In the 19th century, Porto’s workers were housed in narrow rows of one-room houses built in the back gardens of bourgeois townhouses. From the street you see only a doorway. Behind it runs a corridor of small homes facing each other across a shared yard.
These are the ilhas — islands. Hundreds survive across the city, most of them unknown even to people who live in Porto. Ilha Cardoso is one of them: fourteen houses around a single courtyard.
The restoration
How it was...
The houses were damp, cramped and, in several cases, close to collapse. Restoring them meant rebuilding roofs and floors while keeping the granite, the proportions and the courtyard exactly as they were. These photographs are from 2015, before the work began.
What we did not do
Four families still live here
The straightforward thing would have been to empty the ilha and rent all fourteen houses to visitors. We did not. The four families who were living here stayed, in homes that are now warm and dry.
That is why a stay here feels different from an apartment in the centre. There are neighbours. Washing hangs in the yard. It is somebody’s street, and you are a guest on it.
2015
Restoration began
14
Houses in the ilha
4
Families still living here
8
Houses you can stay in