Lisboa_016.jpg 384.82KB
4 downloadsI get to enjoy one of Lisbon's most famous views every day on my way to and back from work. The other day I decided to take a few pictures (to play the tourist in my home town) and now I'll post one of them here, to show you a bit of the city that I was born in and that I live in.
I was facing south when I took this picture. In the foreground you can see a bit of Parque Eduardo VII (Edward VII Park, named after the English King). The park is on a slope and at the bottom of that slope you have Praça Marquês de Pombal (Marquess of Pombal square), where you can see the statue of the Marquess of Pombal. He was prime minister of Portugal in the mid 1700's and it was he who planned and oversaw the rebuilding of the city of Lisbon after the earthquake/ tsunami/ fire of November 1, 1755 all but razed it to the ground. "Bury the dead and take care of the living", said the Marquess. Downtown Lisbon is still known as "baixa pombalina" or "Pombal's downtown" in his honor.
The leafless trees (it's winter over here) behind the Marquess' statue line the "Avenida da Liberdade", the Avenue of Freedom, Lisbon's main drag. The tops of the buildings of "Pombal's downtown" are just behind and then the Tejo (Tagus) river is to be seen, just a few kms before it flows into the Atlantic. The river bounds Lisbon to the East and South and here it can be seen running from the left (East) to the right (West).
Beyond the river you have its left bank, also known as the "margem Sul" (south bank) or "outra banda" (the other side). The south bank is a working class district that has been going through rough times for quite some time. There used to be plenty of factories there, but most have closed down. In the heady days of the south bank its soccer teams were often to be found in Portugal's top division. One of them even beat AC Milan 2-0 once in the old Fairs Cup (they were eliminated though, but only after three games - in the old days there were no penalty shoot-outs, if the teams were level after two legs a third match was played). Nowadays there's no place in top level soccer for Lisbon's southern suburbs.
On the top left-hand corner of the picture you can see Colina do Castelo (Castle Hill) and the Castelo de S. Jorge (St. George Castle) on top of it. Lisbon more or less started on that hill. The site where Lisbon stands has been inhabited since pre-historic times and some sort of town has existed here since somewhere around 1200 BC, when the Phoenicians founded a trading post on a great natural harbour near the mouth of the Tagus. It is believed that they named it "Abbas Usbuna", the quiet cove. Lisbon's name still echoes that ancient "Usbuna", although in Portuguese the "n" was dropped centuries ago and the city is known simply as Lisboa.
In the late 3rd century BC the city, then known as Olisippo, entered into an alliance with the Roman Empire and became a part of it, as Olisippo Felicitas Julia. Roman ruins are still to be found in Castle Hill, along with ruins dating to even older periods, all the way back to the bronze age.
After the Romans came the Germans and the town became part of a Visigoth kingdom. The Goths were eventually swept away by the "Moors", the Arabs that invaded south-west Europe in the early 8th century AD. As Al-Usbunna, Lisbon was one of the pearls of Islamic Iberia, always a harbour city, on the crossroads between the Atlantic and Mediterranean trade routes.
In 1147 Portugal's first King, the founder of the country, Afonso Henriques, "the conqueror" took the city of Lisbon from the Moors and made it a part of Portugal. In the mid 13th century it became the capital of the country and has remained so ever since, apart from a bizarre interlude that started during the Peninsular War, when Rio de Janeiro, no less, was the capital of Portugal, or "the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves", as it then was.
About half way down Castle Hill you can see the towers (they are two of them, but you cannot see the space between them) of the Lisbon Cathedral, the Sé (See). It's one of the few buildings in Lisbon that survived the 1755 earthquake, although it has been altered quite a few times since it was built in the mid 12th century. The church itself is still used and it's well kept, but the adjacent cloister, complete with archaeological dig, was never properly repaired after the earthquake and is a mess of half-ruined chapels and mediaeval graves. It's actually quite interesting.
So there you have it, a bit of my town.
