I'm usually on here posting about Korean or Japanese coins, but a claim I came across during my last vacation piqued my interest and spurred a mini-research project of another flavor. The hotel I was staying at in Porto, Portugal had once housed the national mint—and that turned out to be more true than I had expected.
In late 1832, Portugal was gripped by civil war. The south remained staunchly controlled by Miguelist conservatives, and with the Lisbon Mint well out of reach, Dom Pedro's liberal government quickly set up a rival mint in an abandoned convent warehouse in Porto. The coins it struck in 1833, the so-called Lóios coinage, defiantly name Maria II as monarch in a rejection of Miguel's claim to the throne.
The mint operated for less than a year before Pedro's forces took Lisbon, rendering it redundant. The building was auctioned off, became a private mansion and is now a five-star InterContinental hotel.
Check out the full story of this mint, its output and its fate on my blog, where I've reconstructed the history from contemporary newspaper sources and official records: https://arirangnumismatics.wordpress.com/2026/03/28/rediscovering-the-loios-mint-of-porto/
Relevant coins: