Lisbon Oceanarium

The Lisbon Oceanarium was built for Expo '98, the world's fair that created the riverside district of Parque das Nações, and it has outlived the exhibition to draw around a million visitors a year. The architect, Peter Chermayeff, set the building on a pier in the middle of an artificial lagoon, so that it seems to float on the water like a moored ship; its angular silhouette has often been compared to an aircraft carrier. The watery approach is part of the design: you cross to the aquarium as if boarding a vessel.

Inside, the plan is one big idea carried through with clarity. At the centre lies a single vast tank, holding some five million litres of seawater and around seven metres deep, conceived as the open ocean. Sharks, rays, barracudas, groupers and shoals of smaller fish move through it at different depths, and among them, most often, an ocean sunfish, a strange, flattened giant rarely kept in captivity. Four large acrylic windows let you see the whole column of water at once, from pelagic swimmers near the surface to creatures resting on the sand.

Around this central ocean, four corner habitats recreate very different seas: the rocky coasts of the North Atlantic, the icy waters of the Antarctic, the kelp forests of the temperate Pacific, where sea otters are a perennial favourite, and a tropical Indian Ocean reef. Walking from one to the next, you circle the central ocean and keep returning to it, so the building reads as a single journey around the world's seas. In all, the Oceanarium houses thousands of animals from more than 450 species. Its temporary exhibitions have been memorable in their own right, above all Forests Underwater, a 40-metre freshwater "nature aquarium" composed as a living landscape by the Japanese aquascaper Takashi Amano.

Getting there

The Oceanarium is at the Doca dos Olivais in Parque das Nações, on the eastern waterfront of Lisbon. Oriente station, on the Red Line of the Lisbon Metro, is within walking distance, and several city bus routes stop nearby. Lisbon Humberto Delgado Airport (LIS) is only about 4 km away.