Mercado do Bom Sucesso

In the Boavista quarter, a few minutes from the circle and the House of Music, the Mercado do Bom Sucesso has fed Porto for seventy years: a mid-century hall of concrete and light where the city bought its fish, its flowers and its Sunday chicken.

A modernist market hall

The market was completed in 1952, in the modern spirit of the time — a reinforced-concrete structure of clean lines that broke with the covered halls of the previous century. It served the growing quarter around the Boavista circle for decades, and when Porto’s markets changed with the city, the Bom Sucesso chose reinvention rather than decline.

Old stalls, new counters

Renovated in the 2010s, the hall now mixes its traditional stallholders — fish, fruit, meat, flowers — with cook shops, coffee counters and small restaurants, and it became a temporary home for vendors displaced during the long works at the Bolhão Market. The result is a working market with a foot in both centuries: grocery shopping in the morning, a glass of vinho verde at noon.

What to see

• The 1952 modernist hall itself
• The traditional fish and produce stalls
• The food counters and small restaurants
• The flower sellers of the morning
• The Boavista quarter around the circle

Practical information

The market stands at the Praça do Bom Sucesso in the Boavista quarter of Porto, served by metro and city buses and a short walk from the Casa da Música. It is busiest in the morning; the food counters run through the day and into the evening.

Image credit: Mercado do Bom Sucesso by Manuelvbotelho — CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.