Limestone, Miradouros & Empire: The well-kept secrets in a European capital

THE PHILOSOPHICAL:
THOUGHTS ON LISBON

Limestone — STREETS
The sidewalks are what first captured me during my first, very brief visit in 2019. I mean the sidewalks themselves, not the shopping, dining, or sightseeing that transpired on them. (Although all of this is wonderful.) The streets are works of craftsmanship if not art. Called “calçada”, it is a distinctive surface, a mosaic of black basalt and creamy white limestone blocks. (An adult could manage two blocks from a Lisbon street in hand; those from outside the Capital are bigger.) This novel urban planning feature originated around 1848 and has continued since., long after the city rebuilt from the earthquake. Calcada spread not only throughout Portugal but to its colonies around the world. You can tread on calcada at Copacabana Beach in Rio and at Senado Square in Macau as well as in Africa.

I walked on geometric patterns, stopping nearly every block to take a picture of what lay at my feet. I walked across, ships, on the backs of animals, and on waves that seemed to move so certain that I was tempted to look for surfers. Walking is the best form of transportation for a traveler and the pixilated streets of Portugal’s capital have made those 428,000 steps and 154 miles — to date — a delight.

A typical calcada paved street has a neighborhood padaria (or one of the chains — Padaria Portuguesa and Padaria Barrio), always with some tables outside, taking advantage of Lisbon’s mild climate.) There are small grocers, a surprising number of barbershops (I got an excellent haircut at XB Barbearia Lisboa), restaurants serving every cuisine, a good number of stationery stores. I guess that the porous mortar holding the calcada together accounts for the few sewer drains I noticed (but does this explain why I could hardly find a fire hydrant?). My other observations were that the city has few police on foot — but scores of street cleaners, an extensive and efficient bus system, and a subway system that rehearses in its stations the artistic renown of the sidewalks above. Pharmacies (with green fluorescent crosses) are everywhere. Street names tend to be long.

Another wonderful feature is the architecture. Buildings complete themselves at street corners with curves, not sharp right angles. They are decorated in happy pastel hues, lime greens, aligned next to pale pinks, next to yellows, alongside blues, and pumpkins, and ochres. Some buildings are also decorated with azulejo, painted ceramic tiles. I loved it when I found them on buildings along routes traveled by Lisbon’s iconic 28 streetcar, a small yellow trolley that seem out of a film. They brought a smile to my face nearly every time I saw one speed by. (They move quickly and they move very close to the sidewalk).

Street art is widespread and often delightful. It seems a collection of commissioned and clandestine work and much of it has a cheerful, playful nature. The ubiquitous Juliette balconies also give the streets a welcoming feel though the only living presence I have spied on one — aside from plant life — was a golden retriever.

Of course, a city is its people. The Portuguese are easy to like. They enjoy wine like the French, food like Italians, Christmas like the Germans, and the beach like the Greeks. (By the way, Lisbon was marvelously decorated for the Christmas season.) Most of the young men have short hair and beards, trimmed, not bushy. The man-bun seems popular. No one wears a hat unless it’s a wool cap on a cold day. As seems true everywhere outside of Japan and Korean, the women dress much better than men, but fashion does not seem too forward here. (And that makes this traveler with four shirts and three pants feel just fine. The best dressed seem to be the visitors from France.) There felt like relatively few Americans in Lisbon.

As I took my half-a-million steps, I noticed a weathered, well-worn look to this former world capital. (Think of the weathered barn look and apply it to an 18th-century masonry building and you will get what I mean. I found this Portuguese patina fetching and I enjoy photographing the many “distressed chic” edifices I came upon both in Lisbon and elsewhere.

Lisbon is not a particularly clean city. I cannot say that any building (aside from MAAT) gleams. The point may be that Lisbon doesn’t need to. It is elegant and without pretense. The Marquis de Pombal’s Lisbon does not shout, “Look at me!” like Hassuman’s Paris (I am so glad that Paris does). It doesn’t present the near-perfect preservation of the center of Amsterdam (which seems to dare you not to like it.) Certain quarters (Mouraira) give off the immigrant energy of a Berlin (but Lisbon seems less self-conscious of it than Germany’s capital.) Lisbon is a more unassuming city than other European capitals, and that is part of the reason to visit.

Some cities feel new, others ancient. Lisbon wears its age but without looking weary. It is a mature city. I don’t think it is too much to say that Lisbon knows its days as the world’s capital are long over. The joy of a visit here is to see how this ancient and still evolving city can still impress without becoming quaint.

Miradouros — HEIGHTS
One of the least well-known facts (at least to most Americans) is that some ascribed Lisbon’s founding to a visit by Ulysses. That legend and the destination of Lisbon as having seven hills (like Rome) are attributes fitting for the first capital of the world.

Lisbon is a city of hills, steep streets — some are staircases — and wonderful viewing platforms. These miradouros feel like they are everywhere. (A website lists 30 “official” miradouros. You should stop at each one you find.)

One of my favorites is at the Castelo da Sao Jorge. Visitors have their run of a huge fortress and grounds that offer a beautiful view of the Tagus River — Portugual’s gateway to the oceans of the world. The castle’s origins are Muslim, dating to just before the culmination of the long Reconquista. What visitors enjoy now is the extensive restoration undertaken by the authoritarian regime of António de Oliveira Salazar, called “The Professor.” It was in this castle that King Dom Manuel I (b. 1469, reigned 1494 – 1521) received Vasco de Gama upon his return from India and Pedro Alvares after “discovering” Brazil. (He was trying to get to India at the time and eventually did.)

Tiny Portugal, at the edge of Europe, sent explorers from its Tagus River harbor across three oceans, guided only by the stars. Perhaps with mighty Spain to the east and the Arabs to the south, the Atlantic appeared even more inviting. This allowed Manuel I (1545 -1521) to be the first national leader in human history to be able to determine events oceans away. In the 15th and 16th centuries, tiny Portugal at the edge of Europe, held land in South America, both coasts of Africa, India, China, Malaysia, and an assortment of islands. Its mother-tongue, urban planning, and artistic sensibilities reached across oceans. With superior technology and, as we will see, with some secret knowledge, Portugal created the first worldwide empire, cunningly, audaciously, and violently. (One historian talks about three Portuguese empires: the first centered in Asia, the second in Brazil, and the final one in Africa. Portugal has certainly been on the receiving end of empire as well: It has been home to the Phoenicians, Romans, Moors, Crusaders, the Spanish Crown, and Napoleon.)

In contrast to this history, Lisbon today is a big city that feels like a smaller one, operating at a slower and a more peaceful pace. I found no aggression here. Like the language, the Portuguese come across as smooth, fluid, and easy. There is a gentleness here. (After all, one of the national symbols is the rooster!) Cars stop at crosswalks. Always. And without glares or tempting to play Chicken. There are some wide intersections with no traffic lights and — apparently — no accidents.

The April 25, 1974 Revolution was bloodless and is known as the Carnation Revolution, for the flowers placed in the gun muzzles of soldiers. There is a tradition of bullfighting in Portugal in which the bull is not slaughtered in the arena (although it is killed.)

I enjoyed the humanity and hospitality that seemed to come easily to the Portuguese. This made the words I heard while checking in to my hotel or Airbnb feel like a genuine welcome, servers’ recommendations about dishes feel sincere, clerks happy to speak slowly in English to help you understand the masked dialogue necessary for travel today. (English is widely spoken.)

(I don’t mean to make little of the aggression that the Portuguese have shown to one another — to say nothing of their treatment of the African colonies. The Inquisition had a centuries-long hold on the country. You can find pillories in any number of villages, in the same square or praca as the church and the city hall. Mr. Pombal was an autocrat not afraid to sign a death warrant of an enemy– or to toss out the Jesuits. Regicide and political assassinations occurred as recently as the early part of the 20th century.)