Águas Livres: the great aqueduct and the water cistern
Thirty-five arches across a valley, and the cathedral-like cistern they fed. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Campolide
Get out at the station and look up — the aqueduct comes straight at you across the rooftops. This is the workaday end, where the arches step down off the high ground into the valley.

2. The arches over the Alcântara valley
Walk along the valley side to where the *aqueduto* (aqueduct) is at full height — thirty-five arches, the central one sixty-five metres tall. The walkway along the top has been shut since the 1850s, so this is a look-up-from-below walk; find the angle where the arches march clean across the sky.

3. Up the valley side
Climb the streets that shadow the arches east towards Amoreiras. The aqueduct keeps appearing between buildings, lower each time, until it slips underground and you're in the city again.

4. Mãe d'Água das Amoreiras
The end of the line for the water — a stone cistern the size of a small church, the water still black and still inside. Climb to the roof terrace for the view. The single best room on this walk, and almost no one's in it.

5. Jardim das Amoreiras
The square outside, with its old mulberry trees and a *quiosque* (kiosk) for a coffee in the shade. Sit a moment under the trees that gave the place its name before the last short stretch.

6. Rato
Five minutes downhill to the metro. An ordinary junction to end on, but you've just walked the length of how an eighteenth-century city solved the problem of being thirsty.

Águas Livres: the great aqueduct and the water cistern