Parque da Cidade, Porto

Here, the city gives itself an enormous breathing space: Parque da Cidade is Portugal’s largest urban park, spreading across 83 hectares with roughly ten kilometres of paths. Landscape architect Sidónio Pardal designed it as a composed landscape rather than a simple open lawn. The paths carry you between trees, stone features and shaped ground; the park includes lakes and varied plant and animal life, while its design creates intimate-feeling places within densely built surroundings.

The idea predates the park by decades. Ezequiel de Campos proposed buying land for a municipal park around 1916 to 1918. Land was reserved in the 1960s urban plan by Robert Auzelle, but the first conceptual studies began only in 1982.

Those studies were exhibited at Casa do Infante’s Historical Archive two years later, and continuous construction started in 1991. Near the northern entrance, the Water Pavilion arrived after Expo 98 closed. Alexandre Burmester and José Carlos Gonçalves designed it to appear as though it floats, creating a place to explore water through science and play. The park also has a publicly accessible aquarium, opened in 2009 near the Castelo do Queijo roundabout.