Aveiro has a split personality, being not only a sprawling industrial metropolis of 75,000 inhabitants but also a picturesque town built on a network of canals, earning it the epithet “Venice of Portugal”. Located a few kilometres inland, it is the obvious launchpad for visiting the beach resorts of Barra and Costa Nova.

It is hard to believe that Aveiro was once a port. Today, a wide highway connects the town with the coast, crossing a tidal lagoon area that once was the harbour. It silted up some 400 years ago in the wake of a disastrous storm that closed it off from the sea.

The next two centuries saw an economic decline; prosperity eventually returned on the shoulders of salt workers and seaweed gatherers, as well as a burgeoning ceramics industry in neighbouring Vista Alegre. Aveiro itself nurtured a renowned school of baroque sculpture. It is now Portugal’s third industrial centre, after Lisbon and Porto.