LISBON’S ROSSIO Station, which has been closed since October 2004, will reopen at the end of this year.
The station was closed after the discovery of a series of serious cracks in the adjoining late 19th century tunnel which engineers claimed showed that it was in danger of collapsing.
Since then, the whole Rossio station has been completely restored and redeveloped to include T1, T2 and T3 apartments, offices, an exhibition centre and museum, a small multipurpose hall for conferences, seminars and private events, a new ticket office and completely revamped and refurbished station platforms.
Inside the tunnel, the cracks have been repaired, the Dona Maria II structure has been reinforced with concrete and iron supports and new track with state-of-the-art signalling has been laid and installed.
The multicultural centre on the station’s ground floor entrance onto the Praça Rossio side has been open since January this year with a number of exhibitions open to the public including the Portuguese state presidential car collection and, at the present time, an exhibition about Iberian ceremonial masks.
The new museum space is to cover an area of 900 square metres in the neo-Manueline gothic building, which was constructed between 1886 and 1887 and which has been completely restored and cleaned.
A spokesman from the Ministry of Culture said that an exact date had yet to be fixed for the inauguration of the museum, but that it would be “devoted to multiculturalism and would be open in time to celebrate ‘European Year for Intercultural Dialogue’.”
The creation of the museum space dates from the Presidency at Lisbon Câmara of Carmona Rodrigues who opposed the decision by REFER, the public company that runs stations, signalling and rail track operations in Portugal, to incorporate more offices in the building. This was because the President of the Câmara did not feel it was consistent with the architectural vision of the restoring architect José Luís Monteiro. However, the offices are in the interior of the building on the second floor and have already been rented.
The tunnel was closed for three years and affected 65 million travellers using the Sintra line who had to alight from trains at Sete Rios, Campolide or Entrecampos.
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