Serralves Museum and Park

Serralves is three things on one estate above the Douro. The pink art deco villa was built for a textile heir in the 1930s and keeps its original interiors, with a long formal parterre running away from the terrace. In 1999 Alvaro Siza added the museum, a low white building of courtyards and top-lit rooms treated as a work in its own right, which shows changing contemporary exhibitions rather than a fixed collection. Around both lies eighteen hectares of park: woodland, a working farm with animals, a rose garden, and a raised walkway that runs out through the tree canopy.

What you actually see

• The Siza museum - white galleries lit from above, shown as architecture.
• The Casa de Serralves - the 1930s art deco villa and its interiors.
• The formal gardens - the parterre and terraces stepping away from the house.
• The treetop walk - a raised walkway through the canopy of the park.

When to go

Spring for the gardens, when the parterre and the roses are working. The park needs dry weather and takes longer than people expect, so allow a half day if you mean to walk it. Exhibitions change several times a year, so check what is on before buying the full ticket. Sunday afternoons fill with local families.

Honest expectations

The programme is genuinely contemporary and some shows will not land. Tickets are tiered and the combined park, villa, museum and treetop walk option adds up quickly. It is a few kilometres west of the centre, so allow for the bus each way. On grey days the white galleries and the bare park both feel cold.

Nearby

The Casa da Musica concert hall inland, and the beaches at Foz downhill to the west.