The little wooden tram rattling along the Douro is older than most of the people who ride it. The Brill-28 carriages of Linha 1 first rolled out of Porto's own workshops in the 1920s, and they have been ferrying passengers along the riverfront, in one form or another, ever since. Climb aboard and you are not riding a replica or a tourist novelty. You are riding a piece of Porto that has been part of the city for nearly a century.

Linha 1 follows the northern bank of the Douro from the historic centre out to the coastal Foz district, a journey of roughly 40 minutes that takes you past gothic churches, working harbours, the towering arch of the Ponte da Arrábida, and the oldest lighthouse in Europe. The polished wooden interiors, the brass controls, and the clang of the driver's bell are all original, and the route itself traces the path of the city's very first tram line, opened in 1872. Few rides in Europe pack this much history into a single ticket.

My advice is to treat the tram as more than a means of getting from A to B. Plan for a slow morning of it. Board at Infante beside the gilded Igreja de São Francisco, claim a seat on the south-facing side for the river views, and let the carriage carry you out to Passeio Alegre at the edge of the Atlantic. From there you can stroll along the promenade to the Farol de Felgueiras lighthouse, watch the waves break against the sea wall, and lunch at one of the cafes lining the Foz seafront before catching the tram back. It is one of those small, perfectly formed Porto days you will remember long after the bigger sights have blurred together.

I have been visiting Portugal since 2001, and together with my Portuguese wife I have ridden Linha 1 in every season, from quiet winter mornings when you have a carriage almost to yourself to busy summer afternoons when the queues stretch back from Infante. This guide shares what we have learned, so you can plan your ride at the right time, choose the stops worth getting off at, and make the most of an afternoon in Foz at the end of the line.
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The tram departs from the gothic Igreja de São Francisco

A single journey costs €6.00 for adults and €3.50 for children aged 4 to 12, paid directly to the driver as you board. If you plan to ride both ways in a day, the '2 trips' ticket at €8.00 is better value, and a 2-day unlimited pass is also available at €12.00 for adults and €6.00 for children. One thing worth flagging: these tickets cover the historic tram network only, so do not expect them to work on the metro, the buses, or the funicular.

Trams run roughly every twenty minutes, between 9am and 8pm. Schedules do shift with the season, so I would always check the official STCP website (www.stcp.pt) before you set off, particularly in winter when services thin out.

A few things I have learned from riding this line many times over the years. Get a seat on the south-facing side of the carriage. This is the side that hugs the Douro, and the views across to Vila Nova de Gaia and the river are what make the journey memorable. If you board on the wrong side you will spend forty minutes looking at warehouse walls, which is not really the point.

Timing matters more than people realise. From late morning through early afternoon in summer, the queues at Infante can be long enough that you wait through one or two trams before boarding, and once aboard you may find yourself standing for the whole route. The ride is the attraction here, so a crowded carriage rather defeats the purpose. Aim for the first departures around 9am or wait until after 5pm, when the light along the river is at its best in any case. If you do arrive to find a queue snaking back from the stop, my honest advice is to skip it and walk down to the 500 bus stop instead.

When the queues feel hopeless, the 500 bus is the sensible alternative. It runs the same route from Praça da Liberdade out to Foz and on to Matosinhos, costs just €1.95, and gets you to the coast much quicker. You lose the wooden carriage and the clang of the bell, but if your goal is simply to reach Foz for an afternoon by the sea, the bus does the job. On a busy day I would suggest treating the tram as a one-way experience: ride out to Passeio Alegre in the morning when queues are shortest, and take the bus back when you are ready to return.

Linha 1 makes thirteen stops on its run from Infante to Passeio Alegre, and while the full ride takes around forty minutes, you do not need to treat it as a single journey from end to end. Some of the most interesting stops sit in the middle of the route. The map below shows the full route and every stop in order, so you can plan where you might want to break the journey. Zoom in to see all the points clearly.

Stops along the route: 1) Infante 2) Alfândega 3) Monchique 4) Cais das Pedras 5) Museu do Carro Elétrico 6) Bicalho 7) Ponte Arrábida 8) Encosta da Arrábida 9) Ouro 10) Fluvial 11) Dona Leonor 12) Cantareira 13) Passeio Alegre

The interior of the tram dates from the 1930s

Thirteen stops sounds like a lot, and in practice you will only want to get off at a handful of them. The ones I have picked out below are the stops worth your time, whether for the views, the history, or the chance to step off the tram and into a corner of Porto you might not otherwise discover.

Stop 1 - Infante
Infante is where almost every Linha 1 journey begins. The stop sits directly beneath the Igreja de São Francisco, a gothic church with a plain stone exterior that hides one of the most spectacular baroque interiors in Portugal, where an estimated 200 kilograms of gold leaf cover the woodwork. Behind you the Ribeira climbs the hill in a tangle of medieval lanes, and the Douro flows past at your feet.
As the starting point of the route, this is where most passengers board and where the queues form on busy days.

Stop 13 - Passeio Alegre (Foz)
Passeio Alegre is the end of the line and a fine place to spend the rest of the afternoon. You step off at the edge of the Jardim do Passeio Alegre, a shaded park of palm trees and fountains with a small mini-golf course that has been here for decades.

From the park it is a five-minute walk to the mouth of the Douro and the Farol de Felgueiras lighthouse, which stands on a long stone breakwater that takes the full force of the Atlantic. On windy days the waves break clean over the wall. From the lighthouse the seafront promenade stretches north past the Pérgola da Foz to the beaches of Praia do Ouriço and Praia dos Ingleses, with cafes and seafood restaurants along the way for lunch.

Stop 12 - Cantareira
Cantareira is my favourite place to step off the tram. It is a small, working fishing harbour where the boats still bob in sheltered water and the fishermen still mend their nets beside them, a quiet pocket of old Foz that has somehow held on to its character. Tucked beside the harbour is the Farol de São Miguel-o-Anjo, the oldest lighthouse in Europe, dating from 1527 and easy to walk past if you do not know to look for it.

From here it is a pleasant fifteen-minute walk along the riverfront to Passeio Alegre and the mouth of the Douro. This is the section of the route I would urge you not to miss. The path is flat, the views open up as you go, and you arrive at the lighthouse and the Atlantic on foot rather than through a tram window.

Stop 5 - Museu do Carro Elétrico
If the Brill-28 carriages have charmed you, this is the stop to make. The Tram Museum sits directly opposite, housed in the former Massarelos power station that once supplied electricity to the entire network, and the working STCP depot next door is where the carriages are maintained between shifts. A visit takes about an hour and covers the full story of Porto's trams, from the mule-drawn Americanos of the 1870s to the heritage line you have just been riding.

Stop 2 - Alfândega
Alfândega sits opposite Porto's grand 19th-century customs house, a vast granite building that now serves as a congress centre and houses the Museum of Transport and Communications. A few minutes' walk away is the World of Discoveries, an interactive museum on the age of Portuguese exploration that works particularly well for families with children.

If you have the legs for it, the steep climb up the hill behind the stop leads to the Miradouro Bandeirinha da Saúde, a quiet viewpoint with fine views back over the Douro and the Ribeira rooftops.

Stop 7 - Ponte Arrábida
The tram passes directly beneath the Ponte da Arrábida, a single concrete arch that spans 270 metres across the Douro and carries the A1 expressway high overhead. When it opened in 1963 it was the longest concrete arch bridge in the world, and even now the scale of it from below is striking.

For those with a head for heights, the Porto Bridge Climb offers a guided walk up the stairway built into the lower arch, finishing 70 metres above the river with views back across the city and out towards the coast.

The magnificent Ponte Arrábida bridge

Stop 10 - Fluvial
Fluvial sits at the eastern edge of the parks and open spaces that line the Foz district and continue west to the mouth of the Douro. The small park beside the stop is the Jardim do Cálem, which overlooks the sandbanks and tidal marshes of the Observatório das Aves, an area popular with feeding seabirds. This is another fine place to step off the tram.

The thirty-minute walk from Fluvial to Passeio Alegre along the Promenade Foz do Douro is flat, scenic, and one of the loveliest stretches of riverside in the city.

The Observatório das Aves tidal marshes

Stop 9 - Ouro
The Ouro stop itself is unassuming, but it is the departure point for a short ferry ride across the river to Afurada, a small fishing town on the south bank that has stayed largely untouched by tourism. The crossing is made by the Flor de Gás, a small passenger ferry that runs regularly throughout the day. On the other side you will find a quiet riverside community where the boats still go out daily and the lunchtime grills on Rua Costa Goodolfim turn out some of the best fresh fish in the Porto area.

The water front of Afurada, as seen from the Ouro tram stop

When you ride Linha 1 today, you are not just travelling along a scenic route. You are following the exact course of Porto's first-ever tram line, opened more than 150 years ago.

The first carriages appeared along the Douro in 1872, drawn by mules and running on the same rails between the city and Foz that Linha 1 uses today. The locals nicknamed them "Americanos," after the American and British companies that imported them. In 1895 the route was electrified, making Porto one of the first cities on the Iberian Peninsula to run electric trams. The wooden Brill-28 carriages you ride in now came a few decades later, built in Porto's own workshops during the 1920s and 1930s.

By the late 1940s the city's tram network had grown to more than 80 kilometres of track and was at its peak. The decline that followed came quickly. From the 1960s onwards buses were considered the modern alternative, the lines were closed one by one, and in 1994 the original riverside route was withdrawn altogether. For eight years no trams ran along the Douro at all.

What saved the line was a growing appreciation for what had been lost. The Tram Museum opened in 1992 and kept the historic carriages out of the scrapyard, and between 2002 and 2003 Linha 1 was restored and reopened, not as mass transit but as a heritage line. Of all the routes that once crisscrossed the city, this was the one Porto could not bear to lose.

Foz is one of my favourite corners of Porto, and the perfect way to round off the tram journey. After the close cobbled lanes and crowds of the historic centre, the open promenades, green parks, and ocean air come as something of a relief. This is where Porto's locals come to walk on Sunday afternoons, and it has the calm, affluent feel of a coastal neighbourhood that has been doing things at its own pace for a long time.

From the Passeio Alegre tram stop, walk through the Jardim do Passeio Alegre towards the river mouth and you will arrive at the Farol de Felgueiras lighthouse, standing on a long stone breakwater where the Douro meets the Atlantic. On windy days the waves break clean over the wall, and the sea spray will reach you whether you want it to or not. From the lighthouse the waterfront promenade stretches north along the coast, passing the Pérgola da Foz, a pillared 1930s walkway that has become one of the most photographed spots in the city.

Beyond the pergola are the small sandy beaches of Praia do Ouriço and Praia dos Ingleses, both popular with Portuguese families and great for an hour or two of doing very little. The historic Forte de São João Baptista sits between them, and the promenade itself is lined with cafes and seafood restaurants if you are ready for a light lunch with an ocean view. In summer the breeze coming off the Atlantic is refreshing after the heat of the city. In winter it is bracing, in the proper sense of the word, and you will want a coat.

When you are ready to head back, the tram returns from Passeio Alegre on the same scenic route. If you would rather be back in the centre quickly, the 500 bus is faster and cheaper.