Cod, porcelain and striped huts: Ílhavo

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Ílhavo is bound to the Ria de Aveiro lagoon and turned towards the sea, a link the council sees as its defining trait in both geography and history. Several authors have traced its people back to legendary seafarers, possibly Phoenicians, Greeks, Norsemen or Romans, who sailed in through the mouth of the Vouga and settled on its banks. The first written record of the "villa iliauo" appears in the Livro Preto of Coimbra Cathedral, kept at the Torre do Tombo national archive, dating from between 1037 and 1065, when its donation was recorded at the time of the final Christian capture of Coimbra. By the late 13th century the town was already well populated, and on 13 October 1296 King Dinis granted it several privileges by royal letter. King Manuel I granted Ílhavo its charter on 8 March 1514, and it was handed to the town's judge and councillors on 2 September 1516. The council still keeps the original in its archive, and the charter governed local life until Mousinho da Silveira's law of 13 August 1832 abolished charters across the country. The town's bond with the sea is best seen at the Maritime Museum of Ílhavo, founded on 8 August 1937 and renewed in 2001 in a modern building designed by ARX Portugal. Its main themes are cod fishing in the seas off Newfoundland and Greenland, work on the lagoon and the spread of Ílhavo's people along the Portuguese coast. Since 2001 it has included the museum ship Santo André, a former cod trawler, and since 2013 an aquarium of cod; a centre for maritime religious heritage opened in 2021. In Ílhavo, the Vista Alegre Porcelain Factory, founded by José Ferreira Pinto Basto and authorised by a royal licence from King João VI on 1 July 1824, was the first industrial unit in Portugal dedicated to producing porcelain. Its museum, opened in 1964, stands by the workers' village begun in 1824 and the Chapel of Nossa Senhora da Penha de França, a national monument since 1910. Until the early 19th century Costa Nova was a vast, empty stretch of sand, but once the Aveiro harbour bar was fixed, Ílhavo's fishermen moved there and built palheiros to store their nets and fishing gear, originally in ochre red and black. In the second half of that century these huts took on colourful stripes, in the bourgeois fashion for seaside holidays, and became summer homes.

The craft beer scene in Ílhavo is still waiting to be discovered, so look at nearby places for craft beer bars and breweries.