Rua Helena Vaz da Silva

When people visit Alta de Lisboa they tell me there is one bit that they really like and where they would like to live. They are normally talking about one of two places. Parque Europa and Quinta de Lambert or Rua Helena Vaz da Silva. I’ll talk about Parque Europa in a later post. Today’s post is about Rua Helena Vaz da Silva.

Southern end of the street

What is it about this street that makes people like it? I believe it is the mix of impressive achitecture, its width and its variety of shops. Why are other streets in Alta not like this? Because they haven’t developed yet. The beauty of this is that it is Alta de LIsboa working as it was planned.
When I first visited Alta in 2000 this street didn’t exist. The very beginnings of it were started with the social housing next to Colina Sao Joao de Brito and Parque Sao Joao de Brito. I remember taking my dogs for a walk in Parque das Conchas (before it was renovated) and this street was little more than a dirt road for the builders to access the various building sites. The original temporary sales office was also there, surrounded by a couple of metres of very out of place grass.
Who would have imagined it ending up like this?

Nobre Lumair and Evolution

On the Southern end of the street there are banks (BPI and Caixa Geral Depositos opening soon), a vet, a pseudo chemist’s, various cafés ( a subject we’ll come back to), a perfume shop, laudrettes, a hairdresser’s, an optician’s, a video rental shop… well the list goes on.
When I moved here three years ago, none of these were here.
All of this gives us plenty to look forward to.
If this street is anything to go by, in two or three years some areas of Alta will also be very different and well worth the wait.

Some of the commerce that makes day to day shopping so much easier

Rua Helena Vaz da Silva runs from Parque das Conchas in the South to Parque Oeste. It
passes 5 of SGAL’s first projects north of the park (Colina, Pateo and Parque Sao Joao de Brito, Parque das Conchas and Codominios da Torre). The newest non SGAL buildings are just coming into use and include Evolution, Nobre Lumiar and the Dolce buildings. This summer we have been promised a new set of buidings at the end of this prominent street. (my guess is that they will be called ….do Vale Grande.) This new development will be incredibly important to bring the wealth of one of the street to the other.

The newest end of the street
See the full slideshow of photos from this area here