Parque de Monsanto - Highlights

Located in the mountain range that gave it its name, known in antiquity as a sacred place, the Monsanto Forest Park is the largest green mantle in the city. The dense afforestation that characterises it today is however quite recent since, until 1938, when it began to be planted, the place was practically inhospitable, limiting the vegetation to that existed in Tapada da Ajuda and Mata de S. Benfica Sundays. The idea of creating a peripheral forest in this area of the city dates back to 1868 and reappears later with the hygienist ideas of the Mac Bride brothers, who in 1925, within a still utopian perspective, imagine for Lisbon a large forest with 1800ha, torn of avenues extending from Campo Grande to Monsanto. It would be necessary to wait for the action of Duarte Pacheco as Minister of Public Works (1932-36), for the realisation of Monsanto Park. Based on a dense afforestation, with pines, eucalyptus and oaks forming forest areas with a single species, the project was defined as a wild forest, thus opposing the previous conceptions of English or French park, where nature is more controlled. This idea also suited the modern perspective that Keil do Amaral had of the relationship of the landscape with the integrated structures of the Park. Of these stand out the different viewpoints, the Alvito Tennis Centre and especially the Montes-Claros restaurant-miradouro, with a visual relationship both with the lower level of the pergola around the great lake, and with the Tagus estuary that its dominant position allows to observe. With an area of about 900 hectares, the Monsanto Forest Park is the largest green spot in the city of Lisbon. The Park offers Lisboners and tourists magnificent views of the capital, an encounter with a profuse animal and plant life and numerous possibilities for leisure and sport. The vegetation is diverse, despite the clear predominance of the tame pine, and among the fauna are rabbits, squirrels, small carnivorous mammals and horseshoe bats, an endangered species, in addition to birds such as the pisco, the picapau, the round-winged eagle, owls and owls. There are several urban parks of Monsanto: Parque Recreativo do Alto da Serafina, Parque do Alto do Duque, Parque do Alto de Monsanto, Parque Ecológico, Mata de S. Domingos de Benfica, Parque de Campismo, Parque Infantil do Alvito.