October 26
Visit
14:30 – 16:30
Nr of participants: 25
Accessibility for wheelchair users: the building is not fully accessible
The Reservoir is the first station of the Porto City Museum. The unique space of this former Water Reservoir, whose renovation was designed by the architects, Alexandre Alves Costa and Sérgio Fernandez and with a museographic project by João Mendes Ribeiro, has been transformed into an archaeological site that combines three primary functions — it is, simultaneously, a museum, a work and mediation space and a living archive that safeguards archaeological records. Conceived as a time labyrinth, since it is not organised in a linear or teleological manner, the Reservoir’s space is structured around two axes: a horizontal topographic axis; and a vertical stratigraphic axis.
The topographic axis is distributed over the different wings of the exhibition space and symbolically corresponds to areas of the territory where important archaeological excavation campaigns have been conducted throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, revealed different forms of settlement from various periods and all kinds of material vestiges, which permit a spatial and temporal interpretation of the evolution of the city we know today. The different sections are the River Estuary Mouth and Littoral Platform; the Riverfront and Areias Altas; the Morro da Penaventosa; the Roads and Paths.
The spectator moves through the space, and also through time; as we explore the space in depth, we reach back further in time, coming across different periods from history to prehistory, which successively correspond, as material evidence, to different artefacts or fragments dating from these periods: the Modern and Contemporary Periods, Medieval Period; Roman Period; Iron Age; Bronze Age; Paleolithic.
Visitors are invited to enter a machine that will enable them to read the city — wherein reading should be understood in the broadest sense of the word, since it implies several of our perceptive faculties: beyond, or below, sight, touch, smell, hearing, imagination, contemplation, meditation.
From the programming perspective, the Reservoir is a permanently organic space, in which objects are not inert things but provide links to the ways of thinking and doing of our ancestors. A Museum as a space of constant questioning, as a space for work and exchange, as a place for producing knowledge and stimulating creation. A place to welcome and to make the community.
Source: https://museudoporto.pt/estacao/reservatorio/
How to get there
Rua de Gomes Eanes de Azurara, s/n 4150-362 Porto
Transport provided by ICAMT Porto
IBEROBUS
Meeting Point at 14:00 entrance Palácio de Cristal
Return at 17.00 to Hotel Tuela
Bus
200 and 207
From the Bus stop Palácio
Last stop Pasteleira
Then walk 3 minutes
Total 20 minutes