Lisbon, Portugal

Apr. 10, 2023

Portugal, officially Portuguese Republic, Portuguese República Portuguesa, is a country lying along the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula in southwestern Europe.

The Portuguese flag:

Once continental Europe’s greatest power, Portugal shares commonalities—geographic and cultural—with the countries of both northern Europe and the Mediterranean. Its cold, rocky northern coast and mountainous interior are sparsely settled, scenic, and wild, while the country’s south, the Algarve, is warm and fertile. The rugged Estrela Mountains (Serra da Estrela, or “Star Mountain Range”), which lie between the Tagus and Mondego rivers, contain the highest point of mainland Portugal.

In the 1st millennium BCE the Celtic Lusitani entered the Iberian Peninsula and settled the land, and many traces of their influence remain. According to national legend, though, Lisbon, the national capital, was founded not by Celts but by the ancient Greek warrior Odysseus, who was said to have arrived at a rocky headland near what is the present-day city after leaving his homeland to wander the world and who, liking what he saw, stayed there for a while; his departure was said to have broken the heart of the nymph Calypso, who, the legend goes, turned herself into a snake, her coils becoming the seven hills of Lisbon. Of course, had Odysseus actually come to Portugal, he would have found the land already well settled by the Lusitani.

Lusitani tribes battled the Romans for generations before signing a treaty with the empire, whereupon Rome established several important towns and ports; the Roman presence can be seen in the very name of the country, which derives from Portus Cale, a settlement near the mouth of the Douro River and the present-day city of Porto. Later, the descendants of Romans and the Lusitani would live under Moorish rule for several centuries until an independent kingdom was established.

In constant battle and rivalry with Spain, its eastern neighbour, Portugal then turned to the sea and, after Henry the Navigator’s establishment of a school of navigation at Sagres, in time founded a vast overseas empire that would become Europe’s largest and richest. Much of that empire was quickly lost, but even then Portugal retained sizable holdings along the African coast, in southern and eastern Asia, and in South America. Portugal remained a colonial power until the mid-1970s, when a peaceful revolution transformed the country from a dictatorship into a democratic republic. Long among the poorest countries of Europe, Portugal modernized in the last decades of the 20th century, expanding its economy from one based primarily on textile manufacture and livestock raising to include a range of manufactures and services.

Portugal occupies one-sixth of the Iberian Peninsula at Europe’s southwestern perimeter. To its north and east is Spain, which makes up the rest of the peninsula; to the south and the west is the Atlantic Ocean; and to the west and southwest lie the Azores and the Madeira Islands, which are part of metropolitan Portugal. Portugal is not a large country, but it offers a great diversity of physical geography, ranging from low-lying coasts and plains to the Estrela Mountains, which rise to nearly 6,500 feet.

With Spanish Galicia, northern Portugal comprises the mountainous border of the Meseta (the block of ancient rock that forms the core of the Iberian Peninsula); southern Portugal also contains extensive areas of limestone and other sedimentary strata, mostly plateaus or plains. Other physical features link Portugal with Spain: its major rivers—Douro, Tagus (Rio Tejo), Guadiana—rise in the central Meseta before draining west (or, in the case of the Guadiana, south) to the Atlantic, while the proximity of the Meseta affects the climate and increases the rainfall of the northern Portuguese interior, contributing to that region’s verdant vegetation. Southern Portugal, however, is predominantly Mediterranean both in vegetation and in climate. Despite Portugal’s remarkable scenic diversity, the essence of its relief and underlying geology can be described under three headings: the north, the northern interior, and the south. The old coastal provinces of Beira Litoral and Estremadura are transitional in cultural landscape, vegetation, and climate but southern in relief and geology.

After discussing our Lisbon tour I shall present some facts about about the city.

Our excursion brought us on a panoramic tour of Lisbon.

We traveled along the banks of the Tagus River to Baixa, the old business and shopping district with charming narrow streets and the famous squares of Comércio and Rossio.

We drove along Liberty Avenue, a charming ancient boulevard lined with gardens and known for its unique black-and-white mosaic sidewalks.

We enjoyed a splendid view of Lisbon’s center and Old Town at King Edward VII Park. It used to be called Parque da Liberdade (Freedom Park), but in 1903 it was renamed Parque Eduardo VII in tribute to King Edward VII of the UK, who visited Portugal the year before. It’s 62 acres in the center of Lisbon, including a monument dedicated to the 25th of April Carnation Revolution, and a greenhouse. And it’s the perfect location for the book fair (Feira do Livro) that takes place there every year.

Passing under an 18th-century aqueduct, we reached the express road to Estoril–a resort town known for the many famous personalities exiled here during World War II.

We used our free time to stroll along the sea walk at Estoril.

The drive back to the ship took us along the beautiful Atlantic coastline. At the mouth of the harbor, we entered Lisbon via its famous monumental district that celebrates the glorious heyday of global exploration.

We took advantage of one last photo stop near the spectacular memorial to Prince Henry the Navigator.

Here are some facts about the city of Lisbon.

Lisbon is Portugal’s capital and economic and cultural center. The city clings to low but steep hills situated on the right bank of the Tagus and is a popular tourist destination. Lisbon is rather more tranquil and reserved than Madrid in neighboring Spain, but it shares with it a reputation for great food, melancholy and romantic music, dance, and sport. Portuguese traditionally have prized a simple and unostentatious life, favoring the rural over the urban and the traditional to the modern, where a fine meal might consist of carne de porco à Alentejana (lean pork stuffed with clams), thick-crusted bread, and dark wine. Portuguese delight in the countryside, where they gather to hold family picnics, tend to their gardens and orchards, and relax. It is from the countryside that the fado, a form of romantic ballad, is thought to have come (though it is now clearly associated with the cities of Lisbon and Coimbra), and it is in the countryside that the country’s traditional sport of bullfighting takes its finest form, though in Portuguese bullfighting the bull is not killed but rather is retired to the countryside for the rest of its life.

The city’s name is a modification of the ancient Olisipo (Ulyssipo), and its founding has been attributed to the union of Ulysses (Odysseus), the hero of Homer’s Odyssey; to Elisha, purported to have been a grandson of the Hebrew patriarch Abraham; and, more credibly, to Phoenician colonists. Lisbon owes its historical prominence to its natural harbor, one of the most beautiful in the world.

Once a remote outpost on what was thought to be the farthest edge of the known world, Lisbon had established itself as a center of operations for Portuguese exploration by the 15th century. The city center was destroyed by an earthquake in 1755 but was rebuilt by the marquês de Pombal. This city of multicolored houses and elegant parks and gardens is no longer the capital of a vast overseas empire. It has been reconstructed as a bustling modern metropolis. In fact, Lisbon was designated a European City of Culture in 1994, and in 1998 it hosted the World’s Fair (Expo ’98). That event sparked the city’s biggest renewal project since the rebuilding that followed the 1755 earthquake, including the construction of the six-lane Vasco da Gama Bridge, then the longest bridge in Europe, and other extensive upgrades of the city’s transportation infrastructure. The fair also was the primary catalyst for the construction along the Tagus River of an oceanarium, marinas, hotels, commercial complexes, and entertainment venues.

Despite modernization, Lisbon in many ways retains the air of a 19th-century city. The varinas (fish vendors) who roam the streets dressed in long black skirts still carry their wares in baskets on their heads. Vessels tie up at quays where the clang of trolley cars blends with ships’ horns.

At dawn, fishing boats deposit their catch for noisy auction with Lisbon shop owners while the fish vendors wait to fill the baskets they peddle through the streets. Farther inland the fish market gives way to the equally colorful and clamorous fruit and vegetable market. Lisbon’s port maintains an intimacy with its city that was common in the days before steam. Amid the freighters, warships, cruise liners, and ferryboats, a picturesque note is struck by the fragatas of Phoenician origin; these crescent-shaped boats with their striking black hulls and pink sails still perform most of the harbor’s lighterage.

The general outlines of the city remain as they have for hundreds of years. Lisbon is still a city of balconies and vistas. Some of the most striking of the latter can be seen from the miradouros, the terraces maintained by the municipality on seven of its hillsides. The blue ceramic tiles, called azulejos, are typical.

(Many Lisboetas, as the people of Lisbon are known, profess their city to have seven traditional hills, like Rome.) For centuries Lisboetas have discussed the symptoms of an affliction they believe to be endemic in their city: saudade (“melancholy”), a state of anxiety tempered by fatalism that is said to be reflected in fado (“fate”), the melodic but deeply emotional folk songs that can still be heard in specific restaurants, mainly in the historic quarters of Alfama and Bairro Alto.

The city lies on the north bank of the Tagus River estuary, about 8 miles from the river’s entrance into the Atlantic Ocean. From the ocean upstream to the city, the river is almost straight and about 2 miles. It is spanned, on the west side of the city, by the 25th of April Bridge.

Just east of the bridge, the Tagus suddenly broadens into a bay 7 miles wide called the Mar de Palha (“Sea of Straw”) because of the way that it shimmers in the sun. Scenically spectacular, this hill-cradled bay of burnished water lies on a strategic sea route and serves as a busy port, handling much of the trade between Portugal and Spain.

Lisbon is built in a succession of terraces up the slopes of a range of low rolling hills that rise from the banks of the Tagus River and the Mar de Palha northwest toward the Sintra Mountains, whose covering of lush Mediterranean and Atlantic European flora provides an attractive retreat for the city’s population. Sections of the city vary considerably in elevation, especially in the older areas along the water’s edge, which offer splendid views of the river and the low cliffs that line the river’s southern shore.

It is traditional for poets to refer to the entwining Tagus as Lisbon’s lover. The river is indeed an ever-present part of the city’s decor, and the official entrance to Lisbon is a broad marble staircase mounting from the water to the vast arcaded Commerce Square (Praça do Comércio). In the middle of the square stands a bronze statue of King Joseph I on horseback, an important work by the sculptor Joachim Machado de Castro.

Many government offices occupy the buildings that surround Commerce Square.

The square lies at the south end of Lisbon’s central district, the Cidade Baixa (“Lower City”). The Baixa was completely rebuilt after the earthquake in 1755 under the supervision of Joseph I’s prime minister, Sebastião de Carvalho, later the marquês de Pombal. The streets are laid out in a grid pattern broken by spacious squares. A series of parallel streets, each named for its original intended occupants (e.g., Rua Áurea [“Golden Street”] for the goldsmiths), runs north from Commerce Square to Dom Pedro IV Square, locally known as Rossio Square. Rossio Square is a traditional centre of activity and the starting point of the city’s main promenade, the wide, gently sloping Avenida da Liberdade. This treelined boulevard leads north from the city centre to Marquês de Pombal Circle, which features a statue of Pombal. The Baixa remains rigorously protected from change, but the four-story buildings that long lined Avenida da Liberdade and its ancillary streets have been almost totally replaced by taller edifices in a bland modern style.

Directly east of the Baixa lies Alfama (Arabic: Al-Ḥammah; “Hot Spring”); one of the oldest quarters of the city, it has a blend of Roman and Moorish architecture and narrow streets that crowd between a jumble of houses down to the river. In this area, on the hill where Lisbon was first founded, the Castle of St. George (Castelo de São Jorge) towers over the city.

The castle is Moorish in origin and was named for England’s patron saint, in honor of an alliance made in 1386 between Portugal and England. Just below it, the austere white church and monastery of St. Vincent guards the remains of the saint, which (according to legend) were miraculously brought to the city in a ship guided by two ravens. To commemorate the event, the birds are depicted on the Lisbon coat of arms.

A number of neighborhoods extend west of the Baixa toward suburban Belém. Each possesses its own distinctive character, reflecting the epoch in which it was built. The Bairro Alto (“Upper District”), for example, dates primarily from the 16th century. It is characterized by its maze of straight and narrow streets. Some of these streets, especially those leading down to the Baixa, are so steep that they terminate abruptly, giving way to stairs, cable cars, and, in one case, an elevator (the Santa Justa Lift; an iron structure designed by French architect Raoul Mesnier du Ponsard). Just west and north of the heart of Bairro Alto is the Palace of the National Assembly, also known as the Palace of São Bento. Nearby is the official residence of Portugal’s prime minister. Farther west, toward Belém, Necessidades Palace houses the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The area of the city is 33 square miles. The population of Lisbon in 2021 was 5,459,200.

Returning to the ship, we settled in for the sail to Weymouth, England and Stonehenge.