Mário Soares Garden
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Mário Soares Garden | |
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 Interactive map of Mário Soares Garden | |
| Type | Public park |
| Location | Alvalade, Lisbon |
| Coordinates | 38°45′11″N 9°09′04″W / 38.753°N 9.151°W |
| Area | 13.4 hectares (33 acres) |
| Etymology | Mário Soares |
The Mário Soares Garden (Jardim Mário Soares), named after former President Mário Soares, is a 13.38-hectare public park in the municipality of Alvalade in the Portuguese capital Lisbon. It is long and narrow, with a maximum width of about 150 metres, and extends northwest for 1.2 kilometres between two carriageways of Campo Grandebeginning near the Campo Grande subway station. The park is divided into northern and southern sections by the Avenida do Brasil. Laid out in the 19th century and originally known as Jardim do Campo Grande, it was renamed in 2018.
The first reference to the area is in 1520, and until the 16th century, the site was known as Campo de Alvalade. The first avenue defining the Campo Grande was laid out in 1642, and in 1778 annual fair known as Feira do Campo Grande or Feira das Nuzes began. In 1801, Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho, Count of Linhares had the park redesigned and expanded in the Romantic style at the behest of the Portuguese Prince Regent, later King João VI. The existing well was replaced by a fountain in 1813, and in 1816 the first horse races took place on the site, now known as the Jardim do Campo Grande. In 1837 a public notice banned vehicles, livestock, and hunting.[1]
Today the park is a public leisure and recreation area, one of the largest parks in downtown Lisbon. Between 2012 and 2018 through a collaboration between the Lisbon City Council and the University of Lisbon it was renovated and redesigned in several stages, as a cost of €1.5 million, to expand its green space and plant 700 more trees. In 2018 was renamed after former President Mário Soares, who had died a year earlier.[2] The renamed garden was inaugurated on 25 April 2018, the anniversary of the 1974 Carnation Revolution, by President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.[3]
