Gardens, Parks and Forests

The Devesa Park is a recent urban green space located near the city centre of Famalicão. With its 27 hectares, the park is a privileged place for contact with nature, leisure, conviviality and sport, which is a vehicle of excellence for environmental education and sustainability, and an added cultural, civic and ethical value, proposing to contribute to the integral growth of citizens with respect for people, for nature and for future generations.

The Pelhe River, which runs through the park in all its extension, contributes to its beauty and pleasantness, which contribute to the respective riparian gallery, the lake, the centenary oaks, the redwoods and other large trees, as well as granitic rocks.

In addition to leisure and contact with nature, the park provides culture and education, to which the buildings located there, the Casa do Território, the Amphitheatre and the Educational Services contribute.

Awareness of the protection of natural resources, through the promotion of activities that promote the increase of biodiversity, the change of attitudes and behaviours, and that disseminate good environmental practices, is one of the essential components of the park's mission, in which Urban Gardens also play an important role.

Located in rural farms abandoned decades ago, the Devesa Park, whose project, by Arch. Noé Diniz, was based on the requalification of the Pelhe River, a river that crosses the city of Famalicão, and on the reconstruction of pre-existing farm buildings, reconverting them for other uses, with respect for the original moth.

As a result of a partnership for urban regeneration, and corresponding to the old aspirations of the local populations, the Devesa Park emerged as an opportunity to qualify a rural space that was abandoned, enhancing its biodiversity and constituting itself as an environmental area, leisure and qualifying of the living conditions of the population of the municipality and the wider region, and simultaneously of the image and attractiveness of the city.

The construction of the Park included the depollution and renaturation of the banks of the River Pelhe, which crosses it, the implantation of a lake, the requalification of the rural buildings of the old deactivated farms, transforming them into cultural and educational equipment, the reinvention of the water mill and the recovery of the tanks, the construction of an open-air amphitheatre and a network of footpaths, the cleaning of weeds and the preservation of native vegetation or of landscape value, and the planting of about 37,000 more specimens of trees and shrubs of diverse species.

The park was inaugurated on September 28, 2012, and its management has been the responsibility of the Devesa Park Management Multidisciplinary Team (EMGPD) since January 2014.

Visitors to Devesa Park have at their disposal an audio guide, which can be consulted with a tablet or smartphone, allowing them to take guided tours of the park at their own pace. The application is called "Audite DLL" and is available, free of charge, on Google Play.