Ah Parks; where we run with our dogs, play some sport with friends and have delicious picnics in the vibrant green grass; the good stuff in life; but usually, good parks are only found relatively far from a city’s center due to obvious space and infrastructure limitations… right? Well, this one breaks the rules a little bit.
Welcome to the one of the biggest and most underrated parks in all of Lisbon, and it’s name is Bela Vista – Alto da Pina joint park.
Hidden in plain sight, this joint park has maintained itself as one of the least known parks in Lisbon, yet, the sights and leisure areas it provides, rival those of a compacted Monsanto.
There’s actually one, or better yet, two reasons why this park continues to stay under the radar; the first, and most obvious one being, that it’s not a heavily publicised park, but secondly, and also very important, is the fact that usually, we might use our favorite go-to app, Google Maps, to discover what a city has to offer, and if you look at this park through its satellite images, it looks nothing more than an arid, greenless and lifeless field, which makes us not even look at it twice, but oh my, how that has changed in recent years. There has been some serious work put into this joint park, both by nature and man, resulting in this beautiful park deep within the city of Lisbon.
Looks terrible seen from above right? I mean, other than a couple dozen trees, it looks like it’s just forgotten land; but it isn’t, the area is actually VERY green, and filled with trees (with even more planted as of recently), an amazing sight to behold.
If you want to visit this joint park, start by heading out to Bela Vista’s Park, and then move on down to its joint brothers, Parque Urbano Vale da Montanha, Parque da Bela Vista sul, and the unnamed remainder, and enjoy a peace you’d rarely find in the middle of a capital.
Here is a gallery with some Springtime pictures of the park:
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