Trip to Avenida da Liberdade - Leça da Palmeira | Portugal

Today we are going to move on the busy and long Freedom Avenue "Avenida da Liberdade" in Leça da Palmeira, a boardwalk designed by architect Álvaro Siza Vieira.

A long avenue that stretches between a huge complex of apartments and commercial spaces and the beach of Fuzelhas.
This avenue starts right back in the Aldeia Nova area, and is in this place that divides Boa Nova beach from Fuzelhas beach that we find the Boa Nova Lighthouse marking the beginning of this path.

Inaugurated in 1927, this lighthouse arose from the need to finish with the large number of shipwrecks that happened along this coast due to the very poor lighting back then, having been nicknamed "black coast" by sailors.
With a luminous range of 39 miles and a total of 225 spiral steps that take us to 46 meters in height, this lighthouse was the first electric lighthouse that was built in the north of Portugal and still remains functional today as a monument of industrial archeology.

Right next door, the sculpture “A Linha do Mar”, a work by the artist Pedro Cabrita Reis.
Yes, I mean these five sets of HA400 iron beams that, according to author's words, describe this sculptural set as a “place of congregation, sharing”, where people can sit and enjoy the “extraordinary setting” proximity to the sea.
More….

Is described by the City Council as “presenting a new perspective on the horizon line of the sea and suggesting different interpretations through the shape and geometry and its overlap with the ocean”
Evidently, investment in culture is far from being consensual and this work ended up being vandalized shortly after its inauguration, mainly after it was known that in total, the work cost to City Council about 307,500 euros…. Yeah, No comments!

For the sake of my mental hygiene, I quickly went the wall that separates me from the beach and record the first images of Fuzelhas beach with all its rocky type of cut sand, leaving the Tee house in the background that hides the Boa Nova chapel from this perspective and part of the viewpoint.
This beach is not known for a large sandy, but for the unique beauty associated with the entire rocky area that is revealed by the tides.

The proximity to the urban area allows pedestrian walks as an alternative to bathing in the sea and sun and this is easily witnessed by counting the number of people who move here to go hiking and running or simply sitting on the wall watching the view, reading a book and sunbathing.

On the side of the apartment complex, which aren't cheap around these sides, we have a series of shops starting with bars and terraces that offer moments of leisure and shade to enjoy the view.

Along the way I started to wonder about the cluster of junk that could be seen near the area of ​​the Tidal Pools "Piscinas de Marés", which are a set of pools with about 25 meters in length, built in the 1960s on the beach by the sea, one more work from the architect Álvaro Siza Vieira, who made a lot of projects in Leça :)
Piscina das Marés is the only Portuguese building included in the book "One hundred buildings of the 20th century" considered a new canon of 20th century world architecture.

Once i arrived there, I noticed that the reason for all that junk is the pool itself that is closed during the current bathing season for the requalification of buildings, walls and public spaces.

On this side we are already on the Leça da Palmeira beach, where the sandy is more extensive and where we can find the Sign Tower "Torre do Sinal", a small tower alone in the middle of the sand that served as a signaling point for fishing vessels when they returned to land.

One more suggestive photo at the end of the avenue and it's time to turn back, time starts to tighten and it's almost time to poke the point

That´s all for today :)

See you soon

Thank you for watching :)

All photos presented in this article are my own

@aleister