Painted boats on the canals
Aveiro
A lagoon town of canals, where high-prowed boats carry bright hand-painted panels, and salt is piled in white heaps.
Why Aveiro is moliceiro yellow
Aveiro lies beside a large coastal lagoon in central Portugal. Canals run through the town, and on them float moliceiros, long flat boats with a tall curved bow. They were built to gather seaweed, once used as fertiliser, and now carry visitors. Each is painted in bands of yellow, red, blue and green. Panels at the bow and stern show saints, fishermen or jokes, with a caption. Along the main canal stand Art Nouveau houses from the early 20th century with tiled fronts in soft colours. At the edge of town are salt pans, where sea water is evaporated and the salt raked into white cones. The local sweet, ovos moles, is egg-yolk yellow.
Values are fair approximations of what the eye sees there, not measurements.
Colours tied to Aveiro
Written by the Rang desk with AI assistance. Background: "Aveiro, Portugal" on Wikipedia. If you know Aveiro and we have it wrong, tell us.
More colour cities
All colour cities
🇵🇹 City of tiles and yellow tramsLisbonHouse fronts covered in patterned glazed tiles, yellow trams on steep hills and pavements of white stone.
🇵🇹 Blue-and-white tiled churchesPortoGranite churches and a railway station clad in huge blue-and-white tile pictures, above a riverside of coloured houses.
🇵🇹 The striped housesCosta NovaA beach village near Aveiro whose wooden houses are painted in bold vertical stripes on white.
🇮🇳 Birthplace of Krishna, home of HoliMathuraKrishna's birthplace celebrates Holi for more than a week, with processions, music and coloured powder.
🇮🇳 The yellow French quarterPondicherryThe old French quarter by the sea is painted mustard yellow with white trim, shaded by bougainvillea.
🇮🇳 Yellow taxis, red and white sarisKolkataYellow Ambassador taxis, red-brick colonial offices and white saris with red borders mark Bengal's capital.Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Mathura In: Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Pondicherry In: Karthik Easvur, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Kolkata In: Ketanmehta4u, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Lisbon Pt: Lacobrigo, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Porto Pt: Rititaneves, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Costa Nova Pt: Vitor Oliveira, CC BY-SA 2.0, source