🇺🇸 United States · New England
Portland is the most cosmopolitan and flavorful face of Maine: a human-scale port city set on a peninsula in Casco Bay that over recent decades earned a reputation as one of the great food destinations in the United States. Here the seafaring tradition of New England —the wharves, the lobster boats, the lighthouses and the brick houses— lives alongside a vibrant scene of restaurants, craft breweries, galleries and markets that draws travelers from all over the country.
Its heart is the Old Port, the historic quarter beside the harbor: a web of cobbled streets and 19th-century brick buildings, former port warehouses converted into restaurants, bars, shops and galleries. A few steps away, the wharves still receive the lobster boats, and from the harbor the ferries set out for the Casco Bay islands, that archipelago of green islands sprinkled with houses and lighthouses. A few minutes away, in neighboring Cape Elizabeth, stands Portland Head Light, the oldest and most photographed lighthouse in Maine, commissioned in George Washington's day.
This guide covers Portland with a practical, warm eye: how to get there and get around, which neighborhoods, lighthouses and museums to visit, how to take a ferry getaway to the islands, where to eat the best lobster and fresh seafood, and how to use the city as a base for exploring the coast of Maine. Portland is best enjoyed on foot, with time to get lost in the Old Port, take in the lighthouses and treat yourself to a good lobster roll by the sea.
The Casco Bay region was the territory of the Wabanaki people (especially the Abenaki) long before the Europeans arrived, living from fishing, hunting and gathering. European settlement began in the 17th century; the place had several names (among them Falmouth) before taking on Portland. The city has a history marked by fire and destruction: it was razed in conflicts with Indigenous peoples and the French, shelled and burned by the British in 1775 during the Revolution, and in 1866 it suffered the Great Fire on Independence Day, which destroyed much of the city. The rebuilding that followed, with Victorian-style brick buildings, shaped today's Old Port. Portland was briefly the capital of Maine when the state separated from Massachusetts and became a state in 1820 (the capital later moved to Augusta). The city prospered as a commercial and fishing port and was the birthplace of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Its motto, 'Resurgam' ('I shall rise again'), refers to its ability to be reborn after disaster. In recent decades Portland has lived a renaissance as a food and cultural destination, while keeping its seafaring identity. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The state of the pine and the lobster: Wabanaki land in the far northeast of the country, of rocky shores dotted with lighthouses, of immense forests and of Acadia National Park, the first east of the Mississippi.
Read the history of Maine →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before the city existed, the Casco Bay region was the territory of the Wabanaki peoples, in particular the Abenaki, who belong to the large Algonquian language family. 'Wabanaki' is usually translated as 'people of the dawn', a reference to their location at the northeastern edge of the continent. These peoples lived along the coast and the rivers of present-day Maine and made use of the enormous wealth of the bay and its many islands.
They lived on an economy based on fishing, shellfishing, hunting and gathering, plus some farming in favorable areas. Casco Bay, with its dozens of islands, its estuaries and its waters rich in fish and shellfish, was a generous territory, traveled seasonally according to the cycles of its resources. The peninsula where Portland stands today —which the Indigenous peoples knew by their own name— was part of that inhabited, well-known landscape.
The arrival of the Europeans in the early 17th century brought the fur trade, but also devastating diseases and, above all, a long series of conflicts over land that would go on for more than a century. The wars between English settlers, the French and the Wabanaki peoples would tragically mark the early days of European settlement in the area, with repeated destruction. Despite everything, the Wabanaki peoples survive in Maine today, keeping their identity and their memory of a land they inhabited long before it carried the name Portland.
European settlement on the peninsula that Portland occupies today began around the 1630s, when English settlers established themselves at this point of Casco Bay to work in fishing and trade. The place had different names over time —among them Machigonne (of Indigenous origin), Casco and, later, Falmouth— before finally taking on Portland.
Those early days were extraordinarily difficult. The region got caught up in the long colonial wars between England and France, and in the conflicts with the Wabanaki peoples, who saw their lands under threat. The settlement was attacked and destroyed on several occasions during the 17th and early 18th centuries, in the course of the so-called French and Indian wars, which forced the settlers to abandon and rebuild it more than once. This history of destruction and rebirth would be a constant in the life of the city.
Only around the middle of the 18th century, with British rule consolidated after the colonial wars, could the settlement (then part of Falmouth) grow with some stability as a commercial and timber port. The export of timber from the forests of Maine —highly valued, among other things, for ships' masts— and maritime trade began to bring prosperity to the community, laying the foundations of the future city. But a new destruction awaited it with the arrival of the Revolution.
During the American War of Independence, what was then Falmouth (today's Portland) suffered one of the most dramatic episodes in its history. In October 1775 a British fleet shelled and burned the settlement in reprisal for its residents' support of the revolutionary cause and for earlier incidents. The attack destroyed much of the housing and left the population in a desperate situation on the edge of winter. That bombardment was one of the acts that helped inflame independence feeling in the colonies.
The community, true to its resilient character, rebuilt itself once again after the war. In 1786 the peninsula section was administratively separated from Falmouth and adopted the name Portland, by which it has been known ever since. The name comes from the island and peninsula of Portland, on the coast of England. In time, this Maine Portland would in turn give its name to the much larger Portland in Oregon, on the Pacific coast, founded by settlers from the east.
When, in 1820, the territory of Maine separated from Massachusetts and became an independent state of the Union, Portland was chosen as its first capital. That role did not last long: in 1832 the state capital moved to Augusta, inland, where it remains today. But Portland went on being the largest and most important city in Maine, its great port and its economic and cultural center, a role it keeps to this day.
Through the 19th century, Portland grew and prospered as one of the most important ports in the northeastern United States. Its location, with a deep, well-sheltered bay and a good connection to the interior, made it a center of maritime trade, timber and goods exports, shipbuilding and fishing. The arrival of the railroad reinforced its role: for a time Portland was even the winter port for a good part of Canada's trade, when the St. Lawrence River froze over.
The city was also the birthplace and home of notable cultural figures. The most famous is the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, one of the most popular American writers of the 19th century, author of works such as 'The Song of Hiawatha'. Longfellow was born in Portland in 1807, and his childhood home (the Wadsworth-Longfellow House) is preserved today as a museum in the city center. The poet fondly evoked his home town and its bay in several of his verses.
The prosperity of the 19th century left an important architectural mark, with elegant houses, public buildings and churches. The city combined the bustle of its port and commercial waterfront with stately residential neighborhoods. However, as so often in its history, a catastrophe was about to test, once again, Portland's ability to rise from its ashes.
On 4 July 1866, Independence Day, a fire broke out in Portland —according to the most widespread version, from a spark or a firecracker near a warehouse— and, fanned by the wind, spread out of control through the city. The Great Fire of 1866 was an enormous catastrophe: it razed much of downtown and of the commercial waterfront, destroyed thousands of buildings, left thousands of people homeless and was one of the largest urban fires in the history of the United States up to that point.
True to its character, Portland rebuilt with energy. In the years after the fire the city rose again, this time with Victorian-style brick and stone buildings, more fire-resistant, replacing the old wooden constructions. That rebuilding shaped much of the look the Old Port keeps today, with its cobbled streets and its solid red-brick buildings, now full of restaurants and shops.
It is no coincidence that the city's motto is 'Resurgam', a Latin word meaning 'I shall rise again'. The motto, sometimes accompanied by the image of a phoenix rising from the flames, sums up the history of Portland eloquently: a city destroyed again and again —by the colonial wars, by the British bombardment of 1775, by the great fire of 1866— and which, every time, managed to rebuild itself and carry on. That capacity for rebirth is a deep part of the city's identity.
For much of the 20th century, Portland went through ups and downs, like many port cities in the northeastern United States. The decline of some traditional industries and changes in maritime trade hit the economy, and areas such as the port waterfront lost part of their old dynamism. But toward the end of the 20th century and the start of the 21st, the city pulled off a remarkable renaissance that turned it into one of the most appealing destinations in the region.
The engine of that renaissance was, to a large extent, food. Making the most of the incomparable quality of its seafood —especially the famous Maine lobster— and of the products of the state's farms and forests, a new generation of chefs and entrepreneurs turned Portland into a surprising culinary capital. Its restaurants began to receive national recognition and awards, and the city earned a reputation as a destination where you eat exceptionally well, remarkable for a city of its size. Alongside the cooking came one of the most vibrant craft beer scenes in the country.
That culinary momentum pulled along with it the revitalization of the Old Port and other neighborhoods, the arrival of boutique hotels, galleries, shops and cultural life, and growing tourism. Today Portland combines its seafaring heritage —the wharves, the lighthouses, the lobster boats, the islands of the bay— with a modern, flavorful urban life, and does it naturally. True to its motto 'Resurgam', the city was reborn once again, this time not from a fire, but by reinventing itself as one of the most enjoyable places in New England.