Águas Livres Aqueduct

Landmark · CampolideLisbon,Portugal

A water line crossing a Lisbon valley on thirty-five arches, walkable along the top, undamaged by the earthquake that flattened the city below.

The Águas Livres Aqueduct crosses the Alcântara valley on thirty-five arches, and you can walk out along the top of them. The stone path runs with the valley a long way below on both sides, and the largest arch under you, finished in 1744, is pointed rather than round. Eleven years after it was finished the earthquake brought down most of the city, and the aqueduct was not damaged. It kept supplying Lisbon into the twentieth century. Lisbon had almost no fresh water of its own, which is what all this stone is for. Begun in 1731, the line gathered springs at Belas and Caneças, fourteen kilometres north-west, and ended under a vaulted chamber at Amoreiras. The arcade over this valley is nine hundred and forty-one metres of that run. Walk east from the valley and you can follow roughly where the channel ran. The crossing itself stopped being a public right of way in 1852, and it came back much later as something you visit rather than a way to get anywhere.

Worth knowing

Good to know

The top walk is seasonal and often called off — it runs on set days in warmer months and shuts in wind or rain, so check it the same week you go.
You can see the best of it without a ticket — the valley below at Alcântara gives you the whole run of arches from underneath, which is the view that shows the scale.
There is no shade on the crossing — it is exposed stone the whole way, out and back on the same path, so midday in high summer is the wrong hour for it.
Look for where the water actually ran — it ran in a covered stone duct beside the walkway, while the walkway itself was a service path for maintenance and only later became the attraction.
The entrance is at the Campolide end — the ticket office is a small building on Calçada da Quintinha, and there is no way up onto the arches from the park below.

Things to do

1
Walk out onto the arches
You are on a stone path beside the covered water channel, with the valley dropping away on both sides and traffic sounding a long way below. You come back the same way, and it is from the middle of the crossing that you see how high and how long the aqueduct is.
2
Stand under the great arch
Go down into the Alcântara valley and look up at the tall pointed arch from the park beneath it. It rises sixty-five metres and spans nearly twenty-nine, and from directly underneath the dry stone looks far too thin for the weight it is carrying.
3
Trace the aqueduct's low arcades through the western districts
Once you know the shape, look for it elsewhere: the aqueduct reappears as low arcades and covered channels across the western districts, running above gardens and behind houses. Tracing a few hundred metres of it on foot shows that the famous arches are one short stretch of a much longer water system.