New Cycling Infrastructure in Arte Nova Aveiro

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Aveiro is a small town just behind the coast in Portugal, sitting on a lagoon called Ria de Aveiro. While it is often called the Venice of Portugal for its canals, I think that is a bit of an exaggeration, but for the Portuguese it certainly is a place worth visiting with its several canals and its large lagoons. If you’d draw a straight line to the Atlantic coast, you’ll find Aveiro seven kilometers inland. As the crow flies, it is about 60 kilometers south of Porto at roughly the same latitude as Philadelphia and Northern California. The lagoon is important for the salt industry.

Watching flamingos in Aveiro. A woman looks through binoculars. she is standing on a dike like structure in the grass. ON the water are white dts that appear to be flamingos and spoonbills but that is really hard to see — Searching for Flamingos, standing in the old salt ponds

Flamingos and Art Nouveau in Aveiro

It looked like it was worth a stop for three nights in Aveiro to check out its Arte Nova (Art Nouveau) homes and do some bird watching. We had read there is a flamingo colony in the unique ecosystem of the Aveiro Lagoon, and basically passing it by bus, it would be a waste not to stop and to check out the pink birds.

The old train station in AVeiro is tiled with blue and white tiles. the tiles show landscapes. the building is two stories high with a third story in the centre. IT has an orange roof. — The restored old tiled train station in Aveiro

Student town

We were pleasantly surprised by Aveiro. Aveiro is a student town too, which always brings more life to a city. It has a compact downtown, lots of historic buildings, a traffic calmed centre and, interestingly, some great cycling infrastructure. Known for its salt industry Aveiro has created a little exhibit in the old beautifully restored train station that tells you more about the hard work that went into getting salt on the table.

The municipal Museu de Aveiro in an historic convent is worth a visit both for the building and for the collection for a few hours as are the several churches, usually covered with tiles on the inside with lots of baroque interiors. The town is flat with a pleasant climate year round (approx. 13C-15C in January/February but perhaps a bit too hot for you in the summer) making it ideal for cycling. Frankly, I can see it as a great alternative for Canadian snowbirds.

An aerial view of the centre of Aveiro with a canal in the front. On a canal T intersection rests a circle that functions as a bridge ofr pedestrians. Many houses are white and have orange terracotta rooftiles — Old city centre of Aveiro with a cool circular pedestrian bridge (the Buttercup bridge) at the canal’s T-intersection. Most parking is at the edge

Arte Nova museum

One day, we visited the Arte Nova museum. There is really not much to see, but the richly decorated facade en the tiled entrance hall inside and the spiral staircase as well as the back patio where they serve coffee and desserts are worth a visit. There’s a video playing in a loop with Art Nouveau examples worldwide. The museum has a very tight budget, so we were happy to pay the entrance fee to support them.

Wouldn’t you just love to restore that dilapidated home in the centre of those three images above? We did the Arte Nova walk with the free brochure we picked up at the tourist office, which took us a few hours.

Doing these walks at your own pace gets you away from the (limited) crowds and we saw some nice buildings too with gorgeous tile work that weren’t Arte Nova and were not part of the official route. Not to be missed is the historic train station which is covered with blue and white tiles.

Richly decorated Arte Nova spiral staircase gate

Cycling infrastructure in Aveiro

We walked everywhere, many kilometers in fact. We didn’t look into renting a bike as the distances for us were short, having accommodation in the old core. But I did see some interesting cycling infrastructure solutions. Judging by Google Streetview, very recently around 2020, the city added several separate bike lanes. We stumbled into a complete street overhaul near a school. Below are several before and after image sliders, I don’t know if they work if you receive this post in an email. You might see them as two full separate pictures. If they don’t work, go to the link in the top right of the email or to my homepage Hansonthebike.com and you will see the website version.

A street in Aveiro with cars but without bike lanes. there are trees on both sides of this urban road — Lane removal to accommodate cycling

There is a nice connection running from the university to downtown and a new bike lane over a bridge connecting to the train station. There are some neat quick solutions like a ‘protected’ intersection made with paint and a separation from motorised traffic just before an intersection. From the looks of it there is a genuine attempt to create a cycling network. Most of it appears to be installed in or after 2020, so it is all fairly recent.

Very easy to implement: a paitned bike lane at an intersection on top of a very wide sidewalk. the paint is red. On the left stands a woman near a waste container. — A cheap quick install protected intersection

I did not see much evidence of the local BUGA bike share, but it is possible they scale it back at the end of their tourist season. We were here in October after all. It is supposed to have 20 dock stations with a total of 280 individual docks and just over 200 bikes. I also noticed at least three bike repair/bike rental places. In hindsight, we could have rented bikes for a few hours just to bike around a bit, but we didn’t.

A bare street. there is somewhat of a path on the left for pedestrians, but minimal. ON the right are parked cars. It looks fairly bare. — Another example of a quick install, with planters as separation. But also new sidewalks and parking bays. On the right is the university

A street with a bidirectional bike lane on the left and a wide sidewalk. In the centre is a large cross walk. — Another example of a quick install, with planters as separation. But also new sidewalks and parking bays. On the right is the university

Note the number of lanes that have been removed on Aveiro’s main street Av. Dr. Lourenço Peixinho. In the new situation, the right lane is a bus-bike lane that merges into the one remaining lane, while the bike lane continues with a small refuge between the bike lane and the car lane leading towards the roundabout

a woman crosses a road before a small roundabout in an urban setting. The road deck consists of granite pavers and the buildings around it are 3 to 5 stories high and built right up to the pavement. — A raised roundabout. The maximum speed on this main shopping street is 30 kph

Is Aveiro worth visiting?

It’s not Porto or Lisbon but we tend to enjoy the smaller towns more as they are not overrun by tourism. There is an abundance of not so touristy restaurants and bakeries, there are cycling and birding options, a theatre, museums, several parks and lots of waterfront and nearby beaches on the Atlantic coast. Further inland, there are other places to visit as well as hiking possibilities. Oh, and don’t forget to pay a brief visit to the recently restored 1965 ATLAS municipal library by Fernando Távora and Diamantina Galacho in the downtown area.

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