Casa da Cerca

High above Almada Velha, facing Lisbon and the Tagus, Casa da Cerca brings together an old leisure estate and one of the most distinctive cultural projects on the south bank. Built between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the manor house was enlarged over time; in the chapel survive tile panels attributed to Master P.M.P., and in the oldest part there are still traces of a blocked sixteenth-century doorway. After decades of private use and a period of neglect, the building was restored by the municipal council and opened in 1993 as a Centre for Contemporary Art, through the initiative of Rogério Ribeiro, with special attention to drawing. The garden deepens that rare identity: O Chão das Artes, inaugurated in 2001, brings together botany, art and science through plants linked to pigments, fibres, oils and other materials used in artistic creation. Between the white house, the walls and the light on the river, the place has the calm of a belvedere and the curiosity of a laboratory.