Historical background

The origin of Serralves Park dates back to 1923 when Carlos Alberto Cabral, the 2nd Count of Vizela, inherited the Quinta do Lordelo estate, the family’s summer residence in the Rua de Serralves (which was then on the outskirts of Oporto). The estate’s history can be divided into three key periods: The contours of the garden at the end of the 19th century when it formed part of the Quinta do Lordelo and Quinta do Mata-Sete estates, the garden designed by Jacques Gréber for Serralves Villa, and the landscaping of the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Quinta do Mata-Sete estate

The Quinta do Mata-Sete estate, also owned by the family and inherited by the Count of Vizela’s brother, was included within this enlargement process by swapping urban properties for land, in order to extend the state. When the estate was included within the property, it already featured several buildings – a hunting pavilion, a barn, olive press and farm manager’s house.

The garden designed by Jacques Gréber

After visiting the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris, Carlos Alberto Cabral decided to carry out an intervention in the estate. He invited the architect, Jacques Gréber to design the new garden. The project, whose designs date from 1932, is characterised by a mildly Art Deco, modernised classicism, influenced by French gardens of the 16th and 17th centuries, integrating several elements of the original garden, in particular the lake, together with the farming and irrigation structures of the properties acquired in the interim period.

The Serralves Garden, as designed by Jacques Gréber, was considered to be one of the first examples of gardening art in Portugal of the first half of the twentieth century, and was the only garden built during this period by a private individual in Portugal, on the basis of a landscape architecture project.

After the property was sold, in the early 1950s, to Delfim Ferreira, Count of Riba d’Ave, the Park remained its overall structure to the present day. After the Portuguese State acquired the property in 1986, several interventions were made in order to resolve the most urgent situations and enabled the park to be opened to the public in a staggered fashion, under the supervision of the landscape architect, Teresa Andresen a member of the Installation Committee who then assumed the position of Park Director after the Foundation was set up.

The landscaping of the Museum of Contemporary Art

The birth of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, in 1999 represented another key moment in the history of the Park, via a new intervention in the landscape. The museum was installed in a lateral portion of land, formely occupied by a vegetable garden and orange grove and was overseen by the landscape artist, João Gomes da Silva (with the collaboration of Erika Skabar), who was invited by Álvaro Siza Vieira. The history of the place, its sustainability and topography were structural elements in the project that took into account the presence of the new building and its programme and uses.