"Became famous the classes (F. Távora) about his trips to Greece, Italy, USA or Japan - and in these the traveller sandals that he wear to trail the access path to the Acropolis, later symbolically integrated in the retrospective exhibitions of his work, as a symbol of the learning path the discipline imposes to the architect.
For all the experience of the trip was so inseparable from the knowledge, of the architectural practice and life. "


"Although there are references to travels made by Fernando Távora before the Second World War, the first known big trip to Europe happens in 1947. He makes the road trip in a route that lasts 3 months and leads him to San Sebastian, Lyon, Chartres, Paris, Brussels, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Zurich, Milan, Siena, Rome, Cannes, Nice and Marseille. In 1949, the period in which is designing the plan of Campo Alegre, goes back to Italy and soon after, in 1952, returns to a destination he will repeat forever. "

(“A viagem na Arquitectura Portuguesa do século XX”, José F. Gonçalves)


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"I want to know exactly the artistic manifestations that are in the European tradition, through a journey that would touch Egypt (Cairo), Greece (Athens), Italy (Rome) and France, a journey that would allow me to determine the constants, the links between the Pyramids, the Parthenon, the Pantheon and St. Peter, Versailles and the Eiffel Tower ... "

(Távora in Esposito, Antonio Leoni, Giovanni, Fernando Távora - opera complete, Milan, Mondadori Electa spa, 2005, p.40)