With 83 hectares of green spots, the Porto City’s Park is considered one of the biggest urban parks of Portugal. The first phase on the original project of the landscape architect began in 1993 and was finished in 2002, with the construction of its seafront.
In this space we can find about 10km of pathway surrounded by lawns and wooded spaces, allowing its visitors to enjoy a pleasant walk in communion with nature. It also has some places to rest a little bit and at the same time the contemplate everything that surrounds them.
This is a park with a very sophisticated landscape and thought to the detail, with lakes, flora and fauna very diversified and well placed at the middle of the city that surrounds it. It’s a space in the middle of the city and at the same time allows a little “getaway” of the urban life and we can even forget that we are in such a populated town.
The City’s Park has very diversified fauna. Over the years the fauna has been growing and rooting in an all-natural way. Swans, wild ducks, rabbits, geeses, fishes, frogs, reptiles and many other call this place home. This is also an area that get many bird migration routes, from which we can highlight the heron.
In regard to the flora the park doesn’t stay much forded behind. It is possible to find 74 tree species, 42 shrub species, 15 fruit trees species and 10 aquatic plants species. All together these specimens arise to dozens of thousands. The predominant species are the deciduous trees (bananas, maples, birches, willows and eucalyptus) interspersed with resinous trees (pine, juniper and camecíparis).
If we follow the park’s lines it is possible to highlight denser vegetable alignments that assume the function of visual and sound insulation barriers. This selection allowed the creation of an architecture space very diversified and interesting, either revealing the views or closing other spaces at the same time.
Inside the park we can have access to different complementary places like the Water Pavillion, Sea Life and Aldoar’s Rural nucleus.
A park that gives direct access to the beach, located in the middle of the urban space, makes this a place that is very looked after by locals and tourists who want to know a different place and allows them to connect to nature in the middle of a city.
Written by: Andreia Castro
Translated by: Francisca Rehbein
Photos by: Victoria Franco
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