Lisbon: Monument to the Discoveries

Today, I went for a nice Sunday afternoon boat ride and picnic having taken care to pick a windy day with some light swell. You wouldn't believe how quickly these boats are tearing past the Monument to the Discoveries. Let's take a closer look.

There are 33 'discoverers' aboard this ship, and the chap up front is Henry the Navigator who occupies a lead role here because, lets face it, he was a prince, a younger son of one King of Portugal and brother to the next. He stayed firmly at home however, sponsoring, promoting and organizing Portugal's first expeditions along the African coast and collecting 20% of the profits. He wanted gold and the kingdom of Prester John, but as early as the 1440s he was getting slaves as well, and I have not heard that this perturbed him.

So there's that. Then there's the fact that although this is a very pretty monument, it's also a frankly nationalistic piece of propaganda, produced by an authoritarian government, the Estado Novo of 1933 to 1974. The same regime was responsible for this 100 meter high piece of religious art, you can recognize the style. From anywhere in Lisbon. And also, regrettably, from other fascist regimes of a similar era.

The Estado Novo was everything we are getting to know and love about authoritarianism all over again. I'll just leave this little quote by its dictator Salazar.

We are opposed to all forms of Internationalism, Communism, Socialism, Syndicalism and everything that may divide or minimize, or break up the family. We are against class warfare, irreligion and disloyalty to one’s country; against serfdom, a materialistic conception of life, and might over right.

By the time this monument was inaugurated in 1960, Salazar, who obviously forgot to mention that he also hated the now popular trend for decolonization, was on the verge of embarking on a brutal war to retain Angola. I bet he would have hated the fact that the exhibitions planned for the basement of the monument all seem to have a distinctly post-colonial flavor. This is Al Final Del Paraíso by Mexican artist, Demián Flores, very interesting and well worth looking at the finer details.

Speaking of art, there's also an artistic piece of boarding in front of the Monument to the Discoveries at the moment. I have no idea if it's permanent but it's by António Viana, and according to the blurb:

...he illuminated kings and queens, seafarers and noblemen, commoners and all those others, because, as we all know, if you want to shape a whole world, you need a little bit of everything.

I'm not sure if there are any commoners in the monument although I don't doubt they did the bulk of the heavy lifting when it came to shaping the world. I do know that the only woman is Philippa of Lancaster, a British lady whose step-aunt was married to Chaucer - although that was due to her father marrying a commoner so it was a bit of a scandal. She was also the sister of Henry VI of England. Philippa married - was married, actually - to the King of Portugal, and is renowned - get this ! - for bearing many renowned children, including the above Henry the Navigator. That wasn't as easy as it sounds to be sure. I noticed the poor lady tried twice to name a daughter after her own mother, but neither baby survived. In reality, it seems she may also have done almost as much managing and organizing as Henry did. That's her, kneeling in front of the armillary sphere.

When I was reading up about the literature of Lisbon, I came across this article, which said:

One of the curious things about the theme of presences and absences is that they appear to be at least partially a gendered response to Lisbon. Male writers may tend to sense a presence, while female writers, as they have throughout the long tradition of Portuguese literature, often speak of an absence.

The female writers are referring to an absence of men. That's what you get when the male sex involves itself in Ages of Discovery and all that ensues. The only roses are compass roses, like the particularly massive one above, which I managed to photograph by poking my camera over the high safety wall around the windswept crow's nest of the Monument to the Discoveries.

Lisbon: Olisipo

I was going to walk through the Alfama today, but I got distracted by the pretty crescent shape of Costa do Castelo in the Atlas Urbanistico de Lisboa. It's seems quite appropriate, in that this is one of the oldest settlement sites, just below what is now the Castelo de São Jorge. The street plan is probably pretty much as it was in Roman times.

 

In a way, this is two posts. Most of the writing is about Roman Olisipo. There's only a few fragments of that left, so most of the pictures are from Costa do Castelo, which I liked rather a lot.

From the houses and gardens you can see from the castle, you can tell these aren't the poorest people in town, although I bet they're not sorry when the castle shuts for the evening.

Olisipo is the ancient name for Lisbon. After it joined the Roman Empire, it became Felicitas Julia Olisipo, Felicitas Julia being a goddess, I suspect. There is a vague suggestion that the name Olisipo, or Ulissypo is related to the Ulysses of Greek myth who would have founded Lisbon during his travels, but I have come across an alternative and more plausible suggestion that the name meant 'friendly bay' to the Phoenicians.

And this is from the other side. Actually, I sort of understand, because I also grew up in a part of the Mediterranean where people didn't let too much show on the outside. Although I have to say, Costa do Castelo takes it to an extreme.

It's easy to imagine the pre-Roman settlements as a straggle of poor fishing huts, but I'm pretty sure that would be wrong. Olisipo had been on the Phoenician trade routes for centuries before it became Roman. It became a strategic ally of Rome in its struggle against Carthage and seems to have joined the Roman Empire more or less voluntarily soon after that.

It's all steps here, between concentric rings of streets. Actually, I did end up walking through the Alfama a little bit today, and it was a lot more 'cleaned up' and touristy than this. People really live here however, whereas lots of the Alfama is being turned over into tourist accommodation.

To get this big and to be worth having, it had to have something to trade. In the part of town I lived in, the Baixa, they've found enough remains of cetariae to suggest fish salting on an industrial scale. Cetariae are big tanks for salting fish and especially for making fish sauce. What they did, apparently, is expose the fish, in this case probably tuna, to the hot sun to macerate in their entrails for about two months, using plenty of salt to stop them turning nasty, but not, I suspect to stop them smelling nasty. Back then, it must have been worse in the Baixa than a whole street-full of bacalhau shops! No wonder people preferred to live up the hill. Anyway, after two months, they filtered off their jars of delicious fermented fish product and shipped them all over the Mediterranean.

For example, the Fado places in the Alfama had smart little gilt edged signs saying 'Reservation only', not flamboyant murals that blend in well with the local graffiti. Wondering what Fado is? It's a kind of Portuguese music which I find pleasant enough and suited to romantic candlelit dinners. 

When the Romans did arrive they left their mark with a typical set of institutions. Where Rossio Square is now, there was a big circus. There were baths of course. There was a really big theater, which you can still see bits of, just uphill from the Cathedral.

These are the pillars for holding up the stage, with a drainage system, collecting water in that circular area.

Under the cathedral cloister were a couple of taverns (for pre-theater drinks?). What we're seeing here is a Roman street, lined with shops, which somebody built a wall across in the 4th century AD.

Lisbon: Cathedral

Among the few buildings that mostly survived the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 is the Cathedral of Santa Maria Maior.

On the outside, it's built like a fortress, because there was an expectation that it might have to be used as one. It was thrown up in the 12th century, right after the European allies of the Second Crusade drove the Moors out of Lisbon and founded the state of Portugal in the process. Since the crusaders were an international bunch, the first bishop was a British guy, a monk by the name of Gilbert of Hastings. Needless to say, the cathedral was built on the site of the main mosque - there's no equivalent of the Mezquita de Cordoba in Lisbon.

Inside, it's mostly in a nice plain Romanesque style, which I like although people who like it less might call it heavy. I think this gives the sense of it very well, although this shot was taken in the slightly later Gothic cloister. It's quite possible, mind you, that all this was once much more decorated.

In the main church, someone went all baroquial on the main bit (that's a technical term). This garish stuff almost always seems less spiritual to me, especially when it's surrounded by sober monumental stone, but people at the time didn't think so. Adornment was a status symbol, a sign of worth and importance, especially if it was made with expensive materials and vast amounts of human labor.

Anyway, I photographed some sweet little dragons for Antonia. Look how innocent this one is! I think it's supposed to represent the forces of evil or something like that.

And this one's drinking nicely out of a cup in someone's hand! I think that might be St John the Evangelist, who was given poison by a pagan who wanted rid of him him to prove himself. So John turned the poison into a sweet little dragon and drank what was left in the cup quite safely.

Lisbon: Elevador de Santa Justa

This tower is a lift from the streets of Baixa to the ruined church on Carmo Square.

I suppose the Lisboans decided early on that they wanted no truck with climbing hills if they could help it. Lifts were developed throughout the 19th century, so by the time they got round to installing this it should have been just a case of designing the really beautiful metal framework. That didn't stop them starting off with a steam-powered lift in 1902 and converting to electricity in 1907. It's quite impressive to think that this thing has been in operation for 115 years.

I can't quite imagine who used it originally. The leisured classes, I suspect, just like today. It's got a long line of tourists at both ends so I didn't even think about paying for the rid. If you're interested in a lift, you're better off looking at it from the outside anyway. If it's a view you want, the one from the platform at the top is only slightly privileged, compared to the one from the adjacent terraces.

It's funny the stuff you find out when you do just a little bit of research. It turns out Lisbon once had another vertical elevator called Elevador São Julião, or the Municipal Library Elevator. For some reason, it was much plainer, but also more political.

On 28 January 1908, a group of conspirators gathered around it with a view to staging a coup. This was because the king had installed a dictator which naturally led the ex-parliamentarians (the conspirators) to become a bit annoyed. Unfortunately for them, a policeman spotted them, and since the elevator was closed at the time, he didn't mistake them for a line. 100 people were arrested and mostly deported, but just a few days later, this same movement led to the assassination of the king in Praça do Comércio, and ultimately, the end of the Portuguese monarchy. I found a cool picture of that, from a French newspaper of the time. The king's wife was French so I suppose they may have felt particularly interested.

That was São Julião, but here, for good measure is a picture of soldiers occupying the platform of the Elevador de Santa Justa, during the Carnation Revolution of 1974.

The Galp Tower

This is near Lisbon's Oceanarium:

It's not that the Oceanarium is in an industrial site. Between central Lisbon and the district called Parque das Nações is an industrial site, or at least a working port area, but Parque das Nações is a residential district that's meant to be nice.

It's a planned suburb, on the site of a World Fair and like a lot of such places it risks being a bit antiseptic. The Galp Tower might be one of its best features. It's an oil refinery tower for the fractional distillation of crude oil or something like that, but they cleaned it up and made it into urban sculpture.

They've even put a spiral walkway around it so you can climb up and poke around. It's things like this that make me realize that somebody, somewhere, actually understands how things should be.

There is a book in the place I'm staying, called Atlas Urbanistico de Lisboa, from which I copied this aerial shot of Parque das Nações. The Galp Tower is just visible in the very center. You can also see the Vasco da Gama bridge, the longest bridge in Europe possibly, and a big marina which currently contains a 4-masted sailing ship people can pay to visit.

I didn't go and see the yacht, but here is a bonus feature I culled from the Internet. I learned that Parque das Nações is where the transatlantic hydroplanes used to land, back in the days when it took a good 30 hours to fly over the Atlantic and there weren't enough long runways on land. This one is the Yankee Clipper, one of the Boeing 314 Clippers, and I'm afraid she crashed here in Lisbon in 1943.

 I would love to visit one of these.

Lisbon: Oceanarium

The Main Event

I can't remember when I last saw so many kids in one place, but that's what you get in aquariums. Technically, there are not more kids here than fish, but sometimes, you start to wonder.

I've been in a lot of aquariums (aquaria?), so I'm not easily impressed. In the end, I decided this one was pretty good. It's features include the design of the central 'big tank' with so many windows that you never really had to fight for space, the four outdoor spaces (which I guess we owe to the climate), and the variety of aquatic creatures, including penguins and sea otters. They're particularly proud of their sun fish which is so big it won't fit in the shot.

The lousiest thing about the Oceanarium is that the fake mussels and starfish and so on, not to mention the fake snow in the penguins enclosure, are very, very fake. Look, you can even scrub them with scrubbing brushes to keep them nice and clean! This was a quiet morning at the zoo, with lots of people in scuba kit and scrubbing brushes in the tanks.

Lunch Break

This is where I was when I was talking to Mike on the phone. He likes to know these things.

Forests Underwater: temporary exhibition by Takashi Amano

This is the Lisbon Oceanarium's temporary exhibition, and also the best bit. I spent nearly an hour in this room. I would go back. 

So here is a video. I didn't take this video as everyone can tell, but this aquarium garden really lends itself to professional quality video-making. 

Amano uses everything it's possible to use in his gardening. Forests of shape and color. Leaves resting on the surface or emerging from it, leaves blowing in the current. Depth, layering. Deserts between the forests, crawling with herds of shrimp.

The tiny fish give a sense of scale. Tiny blue leaf-shaped ones against red leaves. Medium ones against the opal background. Many are grazing, a few are defending territories. Many stay in their own plant masses, but I followed one explorer three-quarters of the way along the tank until it met another of its kind going the opposite way and turned to follow. Some form schools or pairs and a few species will even join schools of other kinds. It was worth taking a lot of time to observe them. You can learn far more about fish behavior with an arrangement like this than in any aquarium I've seen before. Now if only I knew their species.

Somehow, I'm much more interested in the names of these little things than I am in the big ones in the main aquarium. Maybe if I go back, I will try to learn their names first.

Lisbon: Praça do Comércio

The second thing you notice about Lisbon is that there’s architecture everywhere - not just buildings like you get in some cities. For instance, I live two and a half minutes from this thing called Praça do Comércio, a massive open space facing onto the Tagus River, surrounded by architecture, which in its turn is filled with touristy cafes and so on. Why is this here?

Obviously, there had to be a perfectly logical explanation: it was the site of a palace which was destroyed in the famous Lisbon earthquake of 1755. What? You’ve never heard of the Lisbon Earthquake? Well, it’s basically Lisbon’s Great Fire of London. When they did the big rebuilding, they turned this place into a center of commerce, by which they meant the major international kind, with port authorities and customs officers. Think World Trade Center.

In the middle of the square there’s a gigantic memorial to the king of the time, and in the middle of the architecture, there’s a massive triumphal arch dedicated to various virtues and leading to a pleasant pedestrian street where they try to serve the tourists bacalhau (salt cod), or failing that, burger and chips. At the far end of this street is Praça Rossio which is almost equally monumental. The first thing you notice about Lisbon is that someone in its past was very keen on monuments. I suspect a chap by the name of Pombal was responsible for this.

This Praça do Comércio is pretty much cursed to royalty. At its far end is the Cais das Colunas where ferries from the opposite shore used to arrive. Right at the start of the 20th century, the king landed here on his way back from his summer palace, crossed the square, and was promptly assassinated. The Portuguese monarchy did not last much longer.

The Pier of the Columns is a nice place to sit and listen to the water and buskers or watch the seabirds and people and remember that Lisbon is an Atlantic-facing city, with the Tagus estuary is its harbor. Apparently, people used to bathe nude here, or from the small beach that appears at low tide. These days it's really only for that elite group of people that isn't too choosy about the state of its beaches. I kind of picked my way across it.