Portugal's second largest city with around 216,000 inhabitants in the north of the country on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean near the mouth of the River Douro. In England, the city was referred to as "Oporto" in the 17th and 18th centuries because it is customary in the Portuguese language to prefix the (masculine) article "o" to the city name (o Porto). It was therefore wrongly assumed that the city was called "Oporto".
Port wine is therefore named after the port from which it was exclusively produced and shipped for a long time, and not after its Douro origin (Porto e Douro). Porto has been an important trading centre with a long-established merchant community since the Middle Ages. The famous Factory House, built in 1790 by British port merchants, still serves as a gentlemen's club and meeting place for the remaining British trading houses.
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