Expo '98

Expo '98 (1998 Lisbon Specialised Expo) was an official specialised World's Fair held in Lisbon, Portugal from Friday, 22 May to Wednesday, 30 September 1998. The theme of the fair was "The Oceans, a Heritage for the Future", chosen in part to commemorate 500 years of Portuguese discoveries. The Expo received over 10 million visitors in 132 days, while 143 countries and many organizations were represented. The idea to organize a World's Fair in Portugal originated in 1989 between two Portuguese, António Taurino Mega Ferreira and Vasco Graça Moura, who were in charge of organizing the commemoration of the 500th anniversary of Vasco da Gama's arrival in India in 1498. Once government support was obtained, Ferreira led the bid at the Bureau International des Expositions, which in 1992 declared Lisbon the winner, against the other contender Toronto, Canada. The state-owned company Parque Expo was formed to make the Fair a self-sustaining event, with revenue coming from admission tickets and, especially, sales of real estate and parcel lots at the Expo's emplacement. The first Commissioner of Expo '98 (and Parque Expo's CEO) was António Cardoso e Cunha. He was replaced in 1997 by José de Melo Torres Campos, after a general election resulted in a change in government. The area chosen for the Expo '98 was a -wide strip that covered in Lisbon's east-end alongside the Tagus river. The area had been landscaped in 1942 as a Hydroport, for docking the hydroplanes that crossed the Atlantic to and from the US. When the modern jet planes rendered the hydroplanes obsolete, the place became an industrial park of containers, polluting industries and slaughterhouses which had seen a growing degradation over the decades. As a result, the Expo '98 was fully built from scratch. Every building was pre-sold for after-Expo repurposing thus ensuring that, after the Expo closed, the site would not be left semi-abandoned, as had happened with previous expos, particularly Seville Expo '92. As a reminder of the site's industrial past, only a refinery tower was kept and repurposed.