Parque das Nações

Neighborhood · Parque das NaçõesLisbon,Portugal

The 1998 world's fair site on Lisbon's cleared industrial riverfront, still a lived-in district, with an oceanarium, a steel-tree station and a hanging concrete slab.

Parque das Nações is the 1998 world's fair site, and it became a district afterwards instead of a ruin. The Oceanarium, built as the centrepiece, is still one of the finest public aquariums anywhere and is the reason most visitors come. It is built around a single enormous tank with the ocean habitats set into its edge. Santiago Calatrava's station covers the platforms with a canopy of white steel trees. Álvaro Siza's Portugal Pavilion hangs a concrete slab twenty centimetres thick between two blocks, spanning seventy metres with nothing underneath it and sagging like a sheet of cloth. A cable car runs the length of the waterfront, and the Vasco da Gama bridge crosses the estuary in the distance. Around all of it is an ordinary district of flats, offices, schools and dog walkers. Before any of this the eastern riverfront was a refinery, a container yard, a slaughterhouse and a rubbish dump, and Lisbon cleared the whole strip for the fair.

Worth knowing

Good to know

It is a district, not a site — there is no gate and no centre, and the aquarium, the pavilion and the station sit several minutes apart along the water.
This is the flat, easy day — paving, ramps and lifts, and no cobbles anywhere, which makes it the easiest part of Lisbon with a pushchair or a wheelchair.
The aquarium is worst at weekend middays — it is the district's main draw and the crowd at the central tank stands several rows deep, so an early weekday visit is a different experience.

Things to do

1
Circle the central tank twice
In the Oceanarium, go round the main tank on the upper level and then again on the lower. The habitats around the edge look like separate seas but share one body of water, and the same animals cross between what you thought were different exhibits. The two levels show the same tank at different depths, so walking both is how the building is meant to be seen.
2
Stand under the hanging concrete
Walk into the square between the two blocks of the Portugal Pavilion and stop underneath the canopy. Nothing holds the middle of it up. It sags very slightly, the way a hung sheet does, and it is thin enough that the edge comes as a surprise when you reach it. Most people cross without looking up at all.
3
Look up in the station
Before leaving Oriente, go up to the platforms and look at the roof. Calatrava's white steel canopy is built as a row of trees with branching supports and glass between them. It is a working commuter station and most people run through it without ever looking above head height.