Running tour · Lisbon

Expo 98 Riverside

3.0 mi run

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The stories on this route

1. Gare do Oriente

   Look up at the platforms, raised above the street. Inside, a forest of white columns, like gigantic trees, holds up a glass roof over eight tracks. This is Gare do Oriente, by the Spanish architect and engineer Santiago Calatrava. It opened in May 1998, for Expo 98. Now the clever part.

2. Portugal Pavilion

   Look up at that concrete canopy, hanging across the square between two buildings. The idea behind it is simple. A sheet of paper, resting on two bricks.

3. Lisbon Oceanarium

   Look out at the building on the pier, in the water. People say it looks like an aircraft carrier.

4. Expo 98 and Parque das Nações

   Look along the river: gardens, wide walkways, a marina. In the late 1980s, this was a field of containers, slaughterhouses and polluting industries.

5. Riverside Cable Car

   Look up over the promenade. Its cabins hang from a cable, clipped on at the stations at each end. The south station sits by the Oceanarium. The north station is near the foot of the Vasco da Gama Tower.

6. Vasco da Gama Tower

   Look up at the tower: a lattice tower shaped as a mast and a metal sail, with a big Portuguese flag at the very top. It's about 160 metres tall. The architects, Leonor Janeiro, Nick Jacobs and SOM, were inspired by a caravel and its sail.

7. Vasco da Gama Bridge

   Look up-river. Its concrete towers, 150 metres high, hold the cables over the 420-metre main span. Then the viaducts run on across the estuary, toward Alcochete on the far shore. That's the Vasco da Gama Bridge. With its approaches, it's about 17.2 kilometres long. When it was built, it was the longest bridge in Europe.

Stories researched October 2026 · every fact checked against a source