The Customs Building - 1842

The customs building of the Port of Olhão is one of the properties that documents the port's past and origins. The customs office was not established until 1842 and dates from the years immediately after the building's construction.

With a distinctly 19th century and eclectic architecture, the property has a main facade facing west (not towards the beach) and is divided into three parts: the sides with two floors and the central part with a third floor. These give the complex a remarkable urban impact, where symmetry is the dominant feature, a circumstance reinforced by the arrangement of the access and lighting openings: seven identical doors on the first floor with a broken arch and equidistant from each other, a number that is repeated on the ground floor, but where these elements are treated more carefully, with an arch flag consisting of wooden grilles and iron balustrades.

On the second floor there is a platibanda decorated with metopes that enhances the experience of linearity, symmetry and harmony of the whole. The third floor corresponds to the three central doors of the building and has only one axial wooden window, the configuration of which repeats the broken scheme of the lower windows.

Unfortunately, the interior of the customs office has been considerably tampered with. At the end of the 19th century it still served as the headquarters of the captain of the port of Olhão, but the building was abandoned the following year. Currently there are commercial services on the floors and a restaurant with shops and a pastelaria on the ground floor.