Pinhão Railway Station

Tiny village station decorated inside and out with hand-painted azulejo tile panels of the wine harvest.

Pinhão's railway station, on the south bank of the river in the heart of the upper Douro, is a small functional building made remarkable by what covers its walls: twenty-five large hand-painted tile panels showing the work of the harvest in extraordinary detail. The panels are signed and dated, and unusually for Portuguese azulejos they include scenes of women treading grapes barefoot in the granite lagares.

The station is still in regular use — the Douro Line runs as far as Pocinho, and the slow trains chugging along the riverbank are themselves part of the experience. Even if you arrive by car, walk the platform.

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A story
The blue-and-white azulejo panels covering the platform walls were painted between 1937 and 1939 by Jorge Colaço, the most prolific tile painter of his generation, and depict the entire annual cycle of port production — from the rocky terraces in spring through the September lagar treading to the loading of the rabelos. Twenty-five panels in total, all in working condition more than eighty years on.