By the wishes of the city council it would have been a parking lot. But the residents of the area wanted a green space. O Caracol da Penha Garden is being born with two central squares, a viewpoint overlooking Lisbon, a playground, a natural amphitheater, a basketball court, a fountain with a waterfall, and the planting of more than 250 trees. It was the most voted project ever in a Participatory Budget (PB).
The Caracol da Penha Garden won the 2016/17 edition of the PB and the landscape architecture project went through a public consultation process that culminated in September 2017. The idea is to take advantage of a densely forested plot of land, located on a hillside with about 50 meters of unevenness, the equivalent of a 17-story building.
For the Movement for the Caracol Garden of Penha, which centralized the fight for this garden, the land "is a true green lung of the parishes of Arroios and Penha de França".. "Currently without any use, it can respond to the strong lack of closed green spaces with recreational and sports infrastructures in the city center, namely in these two large parishes. For its unique characteristics, it can also become one of the main Gardens serving the population of Lisbon", it reads on the Movement's website.
The construction works for the Jardim do Caracol da Penha took a while to get started but are now underway, and the garden is expected to be ready by the end of 2021. Located in a former scrubland on Rua Cidade de Cardiff, between Almirante Reis and Rua Penha de França, and bordered laterally by two streets running up the hillside - Rua Marques da Silva and the adjoining streets Cidade de Liverpool/Cidade de Cardiff - the Jardim Caracol da Penha received 9477 votes in the PB, which forced Lisbon City Hall to move the already planned parking to a different location.
The project is signed by the NPK studio, the same that signed the Plaza de España. The work is in the final phase of stabilizing the slope, with construction walls, and is preparing to enter the finishing, cladding, and landscaping phase. The inauguration should take place later this 2021.
