Plantoir, Porto

Plantoir dates from 2001. Around it, Serralves makes contemporary art part of the park itself: its gardens display works by a range of contemporary artists. This is not a small museum garden.

The museum stands within an 18.43-hectare park, laid out in 1932 by the French landscape architect Jacques Gréber on what had been farmland. Those gardens rank among Portugal’s early twentieth-century examples of gardens conceived as artistic design. The institution here is Portugal’s leading museum of contemporary art, and it gives its exhibition rooms over to temporary shows, including thematic presentations drawn from its own collection.

Its programme reaches beyond visual art to music, film, performance, dance, and architecture, with public events and publications at the heart of its educational work. The museum building was designed by Álvaro Siza Vieira; construction began in 1996, and it opened on 6 June 1999 with an exhibition centred on 1968. The wider Serralves ensemble also includes Casa de Serralves, a villa built between 1925 and 1944 as a private home and now used by the foundation and for special exhibitions. Since 2012, the ensemble of park and buildings has held National Monument status.