River · Spain, Portugal
Douro
The Douro is one of the great rivers of the Iberian Peninsula. It starts high up in the Picos de Urbión in Spain, where it is called the Duero, crosses into Portugal and meets the Atlantic Ocean at Porto.
Picture credit: Turismo En Portugal (CC BY 2.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Douro?
The river starts here: Picos de Urbión, province of Soria, Spain.
It ends in the Atlantic Ocean at Porto.
Countries on the river: Spain, Portugal.
The story behind it
For about 112 km the Douro forms the border between Spain and Portugal. Here it has cut the deepest granite canyons on the whole Iberian Peninsula. Griffon vultures, golden eagles and black storks live on the cliffs, and otters hunt in the water. Further downstream, steep hills are covered with vineyards. This is where the grapes for port wine grow, and in 1756 the Alto Douro became the first protected wine region in the world. For centuries, wooden boats called rabelos carried the wine barrels down to Porto. A rabelo is steered with a long wooden beam at the back, which is why its name means ‘little tail’. Today dams and locks tame the river, but every year on 24 June the rabelos still race each other in Porto. There the famous two-deck Luís I Bridge, opened in 1886, spans the river.
Questions children ask
How long is the Douro?
The Douro is about 897 km long. Some sources give a slightly different figure, such as 895 km, because the length depends on how it is measured.
Which countries does the Douro flow through?
What is a rabelo?
A rabelo is a wooden cargo boat that carried barrels of port wine down the Douro to Porto for centuries. Dams and a railway replaced it, but every year on 24 June the rabelos race in Porto.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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