Within the POCITYF project, Évora serves as one of two Lighthouse Cities, demonstrating how centuries-old urban areas can lead Europe’s transition toward Positive Energy Districts (PEDs). Its mission is to combine cultural preservation with deep decarbonisation, citizen engagement, and smart governance.



Stand under the canopy at Vista Alegre and you'd never guess it's a power plant: dark, matte panels overhead doing double duty, shading the courtyard while quietly turning sunlight into electricity. The same mono-crystalline silicon technology, 15-18% efficient, also covers two more stops on this tour, São Mamede and Rossio schools, plus one further building in Évora, all part of one shared canopy network.



The ground-floor windows at São Mamede look like ordinary tinted glass, nothing more. Only up close does it reveal itself as photovoltaic: a thin layer of amorphous silicon blocking most of the infrared, generating power without changing how the building looks. At the same site runs the PV canopy that is being installed before your eyes, an energy router and a full monitoring system, making it the most instrumented stop on the route.



Leave the schoolyards behind and the tour turns practical: a parking lot roofed in Tegosolar tiles, thin sheets of amorphous silicon flexible enough to follow a structure that was never built to carry heavy panels. No glass, no reflections, just a lightweight film doing the same job a rooftop array would elsewhere.



Vendors and shoppers move under the market's skylight without much reason to look up. What they're standing beneath is 74 laminated crystalline-silicon glass panels, fitted to match the original structure so closely that the market's everyday rhythm continues exactly as before



Park under the GALP canopy and the roof overhead has an unusual matte sheen: a self-cleaning ETFE surface over the same Tegosolar tiles used at Arantes de Oliveira, laid flat against the structure without adding weight or wind load.



Look up at the City Hall roof and, unless someone points it out, all you'll see is a row of clay-coloured tiles like any other historic building in Évora. Those 3,350 tiles are actually Tegola photovoltaic shingles, shaped and coloured to pass the scrutiny of heritage authorities while still producing power. Step inside and the light falling through the skylight looks perfectly ordinary. That glass is actually crystalline-silicon PV, the same technology as the market's skylight nearby.



The tour's last stop turns out to be its biggest producer: 406 crystalline-silicon panels covering the schoolyard at Rossio, delivering far more capacity than any other canopy site in the project.