Serralves Museum and Park

Serralves tickets: everything, or just the park

There are two Serralves tickets on sale here, and the choice is simple: the buildings and the gardens, or the gardens alone. The Porto Culture Pass includes the first.

On both tickets, ages 12 to 17, students up to 25 and over-65s pay half. Children under 12 go in free, without a ticket. The free first Sunday of the month you may read about is for residents of Portugal only.

For the full visit, get the all-access ticket at €24, or the Porto Culture Pass at €42.50. The pass adds Porto Cathedral and an evening of fado, the Portuguese song of longing, at Fado Maior in Miragaia, for about what the three tickets cost on their own.

With the all-access or park ticket, you swap the voucher on your phone for a paper ticket at the ticket desk.

The Serralves Museum and Álvaro Siza’s new wing

Siza’s museum opened in 1999, a long white building with high, bright galleries. In February 2024 he added a three-storey wing on its west side, joined to the museum by a raised gallery.

The Álvaro Siza Wing, as it’s called, gave the museum 44% more room for exhibitions. There’s no permanent display to tick off, because the shows change through the year.

Until January 2027 the museum shows Alice Neel, the American portrait painter, and Jenny Holzer, known for her words on LED signs. In the Siza wing, The Century of Gehry, on the architect of the Guggenheim in Bilbao, runs until 10 January 2027.

From November to May 2027 the museum also shows Anri Sala, the Albanian-born video artist.

Siza also designed the Casa do Cinema Manoel de Oliveira, devoted to the Porto film director who kept making films past the age of 100. From 31 October to May 2027 it holds the first exhibition on Miguel Gomes, who won best director at Cannes in 2024.

Casa de Serralves, the pink Art Déco villa

Long before the museum, the estate belonged to the Count of Vizela, who had this house built between 1925 and 1944. Serralves calls it the most remarkable Art Déco building in Portugal.

The design is tentatively credited to Charles Siclis, a French architect, and José Marques da Silva, the Porto architect of São Bento station. Since 2012 the house and the park together have been a National Monument.

Inside, the rooms hold exhibitions. Until March 2027 the house shows work by Lee Ufan, the Korean painter and sculptor, next to an exhibition of Joan Miró, the Catalan painter. Three of Lee Ufan’s sculptures stand in the park.

Serralves Park and the Treetop Walk

Outside, the park covers 18 hectares of formal gardens, woods and farmland, with about 200 species of plants. It was laid out in the 1930s by Jacques Gréber, the French landscape architect who planned the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia.

The formal gardens and the rose garden

The formal gardens are drawn in low clipped hedges, with a rose garden laid out among them. Along the paths you’ll pass sculptures from the Serralves Collection, on permanent display.

The avenues, the woods and the farm

Wide avenues cross the park. One of them, the Alameda dos Liquidâmbares, takes its name from the sweetgum trees that line it. The park also takes in woods, a lake and a traditional farm.

The Treetop Walk

The Treetop Walk came in 2019, designed by the architect Carlos Castanheira with Siza. It runs level for 250 metres through the canopy, so as the ground falls away below, you go from 1.5 to 25 metres up.

At some points you can see the sea, and at others reach out and touch the leaves.

Until 8 November the park also opens after dark, Wednesday to Sunday, for Serralves em Luz, a walk of about 2 kilometres past 20 light installations, on a ticket of its own.

Serralves opening hours and the way there

Serralves opens on Mondays, when Porto’s city museums are shut, and closes only on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. In winter it shuts an hour earlier.

There are three places to eat: a restaurant with a lunch buffet, a tea house and a bar at the auditorium. Parts of the park or the house sometimes close for private events.

Serralves is out west, about 45 minutes’ walk beyond Casa da Música, so take the bus. The city’s 201 runs from Aliados, in the centre, to the Serralves stop, and the 207 stops at Serralves Museu. By metro, ride to Casa da Música and change to the Metrobus, which stops at Serralves.

After Serralves: Casa da Música and the Crystal Palace Gardens

Casa da Música is on the way back to the centre, so you can carry on east from there.