# Is Paranhos a Good Area to Stay in Porto? Map & Verdict

Verdict: Avoid. Cheap for a reason. Read the cons first.

Interactive map: https://stayzones.com/where-to-stay-in-porto/paranhos
Every Porto district: https://stayzones.com/where-to-stay-in-porto.md

The university, the teaching hospital and forty thousand students. Good metro, the cheapest rooms in the city, and no other reason for a visitor to be here.

Facts: 30 min walk to Avenida dos Aliados; 35 min to the airport; 30 min to the beach; price €; best for budget, business trips; lines D.

Paranhos is where Porto keeps its institutions: the university campus, Hospital de São João, the IPO cancer centre, the halls of residence and the football stadium's northern approach. The yellow line D runs straight down it into Aliados in about eight minutes, and a room costs less than the same star rating in the Baixa. Those two facts are why people book here by accident, usually from a map that shows the metro and not the walk.

The walk is 30 minutes and uphill on the way home. There is nothing in the parish that a visitor crossed a continent to see, the hotel stock is chain rooms bolted to hospital and campus buildings, the cheapest of them inside a hospital shopping gallery, and in August, when the students go home, the streets that do have life in term time have none.

Book here only if your trip is to the hospital or the university. Otherwise the saving buys you an hour a day on the metro.

What works:
- Yellow line D reaches Aliados in about eight minutes
- The cheapest rooms in the city for the same star rating
- The right base if the trip is to Hospital de São João or the university

What does not:
- Nothing in the district that a visitor would cross the city for
- A 30-minute walk to Aliados, uphill on the way back
- Hotel stock is chain rooms attached to campus and hospital buildings
- Empty in August once the students have gone

Hotels in Paranhos: https://www.stay22.com/allez/booking?aid=stayzones&link=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.booking.com%2Fsearchresults.html%3Fss%3DParanhos%252C%2520Porto%26latitude%3D41.17489955161292%26longitude%3D-8.60278313387097%26nflt%3Ddistance%253D1508%26group_adults%3D2%26no_rooms%3D1

## Other districts in Porto

- [Baixa, Sé & Ribeira](https://stayzones.com/where-to-stay-in-porto/baixa-se-ribeira): Recommended. The whole UNESCO centre in one parish: Aliados, the cathedral, the Ribeira quay and Cedofeita's shopping streets. Everything you came for is inside a 20-minute walk, and so is everybody else.
- [Gaia Riverside (Santa Marinha)](https://stayzones.com/where-to-stay-in-porto/gaia-riverside): Mixed. The port lodges, the cable car and the postcard view of Porto - which is the catch, because the postcard is of the opposite bank. You sleep 15 minutes and one bridge from what you came to see.
- [Bonfim](https://stayzones.com/where-to-stay-in-porto/bonfim): Mixed. The cheap side of the centre: 15 minutes east of Aliados on a rare flat walk, five metro lines at Campo 24 de Agosto, and streets that the renovation money has not reached yet.
- [Boavista & Massarelos](https://stayzones.com/where-to-stay-in-porto/boavista-massarelos): Mixed. Porto's business address: the big Avenida da Boavista hotels, Serralves and its park, and a river bank with nobody on it. Quiet, well built, and no metro station inside the district.
- [Foz do Douro & Nevogilde](https://stayzones.com/where-to-stay-in-porto/foz-do-douro): Mixed. Where Porto meets the Atlantic: beaches, the promenade and the most expensive rooms in the city. It is also 7 km from the cathedral, with no metro station and one slow tram.
- [Campanhã](https://stayzones.com/where-to-stay-in-porto/campanha): Avoid. The long-distance station and very little else. The cheapest rooms in Porto, 3 km east of São Bento, in a district being rebuilt around a bus terminal and a car park.