Nuclei and Museum Places of Emigration

The Public Walk

The “Jardim do Calvário”, or Public Walk, was Commander Albino de Oliveira Guimarães’s idea; it was planned in 1889 and inaugurated in 1892 as a cultural entertainment place in the Portuguese romantic context.

The Public Garden, which was a private garden located in the old hillock of the Calvário and looked a hybrid path, was surrounded by iron railings supported by stone pillars. The inside was decorated with exotic vegetation, a bandstand, a lake and lampposts; all these elements made the place very elegant.

With the appearance of a new middle class, the Public Walk of the nineteenth century, became the meeting point, with an ideological and symbolic function of those who went there.

In the late romantic period, Fafe had its own Public Walk like those which existed in other Portuguese towns. They had similar space paradigms (for example in Braga and Guimarães) and the fundamental characteristics were the cast iron railings and gates, the exotic trees and the lake, which gave the place a naturalistic exotic atmosphere.