Avenida dos Banhos (Portuguese for Baths Avenue), is the main waterfront street and a popular

tourist attraction A tourist attraction is a place of interest that tourists visit, typically for its inherent or an exhibited natural or cultural value, historical significance, natural or built beauty, offering leisure and amusement. Types Places of natural ...

Póvoa de Varzim Póvoa de Varzim (, ) is a Portugal, Portuguese city in Norte Region, Portugal, Northern Portugal and sub-region of Greater Porto, from its city centre. It sits in a sandy coastal plain, a cuspate foreland, halfway between the Minho River, Minho ...

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

. It roughly encompasses the central waterfront area of Póvoa de Varzim from Passeio Alegre Square and the

Port of Póvoa de Varzim The Port of Póvoa de Varzim is a seaport built in Enseada da Póvoa Bay in the city of Póvoa de Varzim in Portugal. During the Middle Ages, it was known as Port of Varzim (''Porto de Veracim'' in Old Portuguese). Once used for trade and shipbu ...

to Vasco da Gama Avenue.

History

Beach-going in Póvoa de Varzim was concentrated around Passeio Alegre. In 1812, the Avenue was known as Rua da Regoiça street and was populated by fishermen houses of Bairro Norte. With the popularity of this district's beaches, summer houses started appearing and was, spontaneously called, Banhos street around 1846. In 1897 it gained the current naming as Avenida dos Banhos, it was known as Avenida Brasil since 1916 and in 1926, Rua dos Heróis da Grande Guerra. Only in 1966 the Avenida dos Banhos popular naming was officially adopted. David Alves (1866-1924) projected the creation of a great Avenida dos Banhos to rival

Nice Nice ( , ; Niçard dialect, Niçard: , classical norm, or , nonstandard, ; it, Nizza ; lij, Nissa; grc, Νίκαια; la, Nicaea) is the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes departments of France, department in France. The Nice urban unit, agg ...

and

Ostend Ostend ( nl, Oostende, ; french: link=no, Ostende ; german: link=no, Ostende ; vls, Ostende) is a coastal city and municipality, located in the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It comprises the boroughs of Mariakerk ...

, and in 1917 he commissioned a project to architect Moura Coutinho. The project aimed for an avenue tipped with multifamily villas, with a modernist style and arcades and some uniformity in the façades, but the project failed. Guardasol 1920 Povoa Varzim

The current buildings of Café Guardasol and Diana-Bar are from 1838-1939, during the administration of mayor Silveira Campos. The project was very controversial even when it was built. Café Guardasol development replaced a 1920s notable and popular wooden beach bar covered with a massive summer umbrella. Diana Bar, with a 1930s modern architecture and unusual in Portugal, became a very notable beach bar, especially popular among writers and used for

tertulia A tertulia (, ; pt, tertúlia ; ca, tertúlia ) is a social gathering with literary or artistic overtones, especially in Iberian Peninsula, Iberia or in Spanish America. Tertulia also means an informal meeting of people to talk about current affa ...

sessions. Since the 1960s and especially in the 1970s and a rapidly incleasing population with returning Portuguese-Africans from Angola and Mozambique, the single family villas which existed in the avenue were replaced by multifamily buildings with little attention to the aesthetics. Since 1998, the recovery of the avenue was a project led by architect Rui Bianchi, of Póvoa de Varzim City Hall, which gained an honorable mention in the second edition of the tourism prize in beach category of the Portuguese Institute of Tourism. Initially, the avenue was popular only during the hot summer days, but the opening of the A7 and A11 motorways in early 2000s, made it a year around popular destination in Northern Portugal for weekends and sunny days. Occasionally, during the summer and due to the high number of visitor, the avenue is closed to traffic.

Urban morphology

One of the most popular tourist attractions in Northern Portugal, Avenida dos Banhos is a long avenue. Its sidewalk, formally known as Picadeiro, is best known for being the location of central beaches:

Redonda Redonda is an uninhabited Caribbean island that is a part of Antigua and Barbuda, in the Leeward Islands, West Indies. The island is about long, wide, and is high at its highest point. This small island lies between the islands of Nevis and ...

(in the 19th century known as Banhos Beach), Salgueira and Verde. It is the location of a beachfront

bikeway Cycling infrastructure is all infrastructure cyclists are allowed to use. Bikeways include bike paths, bike lanes, cycle tracks, rail trails and, where permitted, sidewalks. Roads used by Motor vehicle, motorists are also cycling infrastructu ...

, several wooden-built beach bars and the oldest beach bar in Portugal — ''Café Guardassol'', popular nightclubs, Diana-Bar Beach Library, Carvalhido esplanade, Passeio Alegre and Casino da Póvoa. It also links the two major avenues of Póvoa de Varzim, Avenida Mouzinho de Albuquerque and Avenida Vasco da Gama. {{coord missing, Portugal Geography of Póvoa de Varzim Tourist attractions in Póvoa de Varzim