Piscina das Marés
Tidal pool complex of poured concrete blended into coastal rocks, filled and drained by the ocean itself.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Piscina das Marés follows a twenty-eight-year-old Álvaro Siza in 1960, handed the brief of making a violent stretch of Atlantic coast at Leça da Palmeira safe to swim, and his decision to work with the existing black rocks rather than flatten them. You'll walk the ramp he designed between blind concrete walls before the sea reappears, and hear how long the project took to finish and what happened to it decades later, including a theft and a national monument designation. Notice where the poured concrete and the rock blur into each other.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Pérgola da Nevogilde
Concrete seafront colonnade with columns and balustrade framing sunset views over the Atlantic.
Matosinhos Beach
Long golden Atlantic shoreline formed by port seawalls, overlooked by a giant swaying red net sculpture.
Capela do Senhor da Pedra
Hexagonal chapel on a seaside boulder, linked to an ancient shrine and a shipwreck survivor's vow.
Parque da Cidade do Porto
Sprawling rural-style park of granite walls and drainage ponds stretching unbroken to the open sea.
Mercado Municipal de Matosinhos
Thin-shell concrete market hall with a parabolic vault roof built during wartime steel shortages.
Ponte da Arrábida
Sweeping reinforced-concrete arch built cantilevered out over a river gorge, once the world's longest of its kind.