Colours of Lisbon: gardens

Take a moment to escape the bustle of the city in these beautifully manicured gardens

Even if you’re only in Lisbon for a short time, it’s well worth seeking out one of the city’s green spaces. Two of our favourites, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian and Parque Eduardo VII both offer a moment of calm, with some interesting landmarks nearby.

Fundção Calouste Gulbenkian

The Parque Santa Gertrudes, built in the 1960s by landscaping artists António Viana Barreto and Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles, and known by all as the Garden of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, is one of the more emblematic gardens of the modern movement in Portugal and a reference for the landscaping architecture of the 20th century. Located in Avenida de Berna, just a 15-minute walk from Corinthia Hotel Lisbon, this almost 20-acre garden offers a wide lake by which to relax, and number of different green areas, where you can find yourself thinking you are in Gerês, Minho or the Azores, depending on the existing fauna and flora.

Open from sunrise to sunset and free of charge, it’s the ideal place to rest and forget that you are in the centre of a big city.

Parque Eduardo VII

The largest park in the centre of the city ascends one of Lisbon’s hills. From the top you can see Marquês de Pombal, Avenida da Liberdade, São Jorge Castle and the River Tagus. Inside the park, attractions of note include a greenhouse built in the 1930s, with several plants brought from tropical climates. It is one of Lisbon’s most important green areas, also considered a living museum and featuring small ponds, waterfalls, some statues, hundreds of different species of plants and a warm greenhouse. The park’s name is a tribute to the English monarch Edward VII, who visited Lisbon in 1903, five centuries after the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance.

At the top of the park is a lookout with a huge 20-metre-long Portuguese flag, and a monument to 1974’s April 25th Carnations Revolution, inaugurated in 1997.