A beautiful cover from my country, Portugal, depicting a miniature sheet issued in 1997 with a view of the
Historic Centre of Oporto. Porto or Oporto is the second-largest city in Portugal, the capital of the Porto District, and one of the Iberian Peninsula's major urban areas. Porto city proper, which is the entire municipality of Porto, is small compared to its metropolitan area, with an estimated population of just 232,000 people in a municipality with only 41.42 km2. Porto's metropolitan area has around 1.7 million people in an area of 2,395 km2, making it the second-largest urban area in Portugal. Located along the Douro River estuary in northern Portugal, Porto is one of the oldest European centres, and its core was proclaimed a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1996, as
"Historic Centre of Porto, Luiz I Bridge and Monastery of Serra do Pilar". The historic area is also a National Monument of Portugal. The western part of its urban area extends to the coastline of the Atlantic Ocean. Its settlement dates back many centuries, when it was an outpost of the Roman Empire.
