Portland, Maine: Old Port Lobster Culture, Portland Head Light, and New England's Best Food City

The Old Port district, centered on Exchange Street and Commercial Street along the waterfront, is compact enough to walk in an hour but rewards longer exploration. The brick warehouses from the 1870s and 1880s — built after the Great Fire of 1866 destroyed much of the city — have been uniformly adapted to commercial uses that reflect Portland's current character: independent restaurants, cheese shops, bakeries, wine bars, bookstores, craft breweries, and the Rabelaisian abundance of Eventide Oyster Co. and The Honey Paw on Middle Street. The Portland Public Market, at the northern end of the Old Port, has local producers selling Maine cheese, charcuterie, and produce.

Lobster is what Portland sells best and what the city does most distinctively. The lobster shack model — a no-frills waterfront operation serving boiled lobster, steamers, corn, and drawn butter at communal tables with direct harbor views — is represented at its most straightforward by Portland Lobster Company at the Commercial Street waterfront and the DiMillo's on the Water float restaurant on the pier. The correct New England lobster roll — cold meat, mayo, chopped celery, in a toasted split-top hot dog bun — competes with the warm Connecticut version (hot butter) at most Maine restaurants; Portland's kitchens have opinions on which is correct. The Portland Fish Exchange, a working fish auction operating since 1986, processes the catch from the Maine fishing fleet each morning; it is not a visitor attraction, but the Commercial Street fish shops adjacent to the waterfront reflect the quality of the daily catch.

Portland Head Light, at the entrance to Portland Harbor in Cape Elizabeth, is the oldest lighthouse in Maine — constructed 1791, commissioned by George Washington — and one of the most photographed lighthouses in the United States. The keeper's quarters are now a maritime history museum; the grounds are part of Fort Williams Park, whose open green and walking paths along the rocky headland make the site worth the 10-minute drive from the Old Port. The lighthouse is active and managed by the United States Coast Guard. The Cape Elizabeth coast highway south of the lighthouse passes two additional lighthouses (Two Lights) within 5 kilometres.

The Portland Museum of Art on Congress Square holds the most significant collection of American art in northern New England, with particular strength in Winslow Homer (who lived and worked on the Maine coast) and the generation of American landscape painters who depicted the Maine coast from the 1880s through the 1940s. The museum's collection of 19th-century Maine and New England landscape painting is a specific record of how this coastline and its light were perceived before widespread development. The Congress Street Arts District, running west from the museum, has the commercial galleries, studios, and performance venues that form Portland's arts community. The Eastern Promenade, on the city's eastern edge above Casco Bay, has a walking and cycling path with views over the outer islands that are visible on most days.