Rua do Infante D. Henrique

Building retains traces of the Gothic and Manueline styles, with symmetrical windows and the original portal on Rua do Infante D. Henrique, numbered 47-53. Built in 1325 by King Afonso IV, this building served as the Royal Warehouse (Customs) of Porto, a central step in the collection and control of goods arriving in the city. In the fourteenth century it also became the Mint, installed adjacent to the warehouse and in function in this place until the seventeenth/eighteenth century. Tradition and medieval chronicles attribute to the building the birthplace of Prince Henry the Navigator in 1394, during the court's stay in Porto. Rua do Infante D. Henrique became a business centre and the house especially numbers 47 to 53 housed, since the time of D. João I (beginning of the century. XV), the first Merchants' Exchange of Porto, whose coat of arms of the House of Avis is still visible on the façade. The building maintained relevance as a nerve centre of commerce governed by the crown until the nineteenth century. Despite having undergone changes at the end of the nineteenth century and remodelled in the seventeenth century, the building retains traces of the Gothic and Manueline styles, with symmetrical windows and the original portal of Rua do Infante D. Henrique, numbered between 47 and 53. During the 90s, archaeological excavations revealed traces of medieval and Roman occupations, mosaics and structures of the old Mint and Customs House, now integrated into the museum nucleus of the Municipal Historical Archive of Porto. It was classified as a National Monument in 1924. The property has about 500 m2 and can be increased by two floors, reaching about 750 m2 (125 m2 of implantation).