July 31, 2010
Lisbon
If you’ve followed my blogs, you know that the trinity for me is Castles/Forts, Churches,and Museums, at least in Europe, and that’s why I’m ecstatic: yesterday was truly a Fred day.
We began with a city tour that more or less duplicated things I’d done when we got in on Thursday. I had visited one of the two Scout organizations (the big one is Catholic (this country is 98% Catholic, but the shop was in the suburbs), which put me in the area of Belem (the districts are named for the local parish; Belem is the waterfront area—Bethlehem), which was where several of the important sites were, so I stayed. One is the monastery of St. Jerome, a magnificent edifice constructed by the king to commemorate one of the most important voyages in European history—the discovery of the route to India around Africa.
Significantly, this westernmost part of Western Europe, recovered from the Moors in 1147, was really important in those early voyages of discovery. Unlike Lewis and Clark, the Portuguese shared Europe’s ignorance of the world beyond the horizon. Like troop 19, whose motto is bring on the adventure, for some reason 15 th century Portuguese, led by Prince Henry the Navigator (one of the sons of the king, Henry was a prince, but never navigated anything; he simply encouraged others to probe the limits of the known world, culminating in the round of the Cape of Good Hope and the entry into the Indian Ocean, with Vasco da Gama bringing back the riches of India and making Portugal one of the richest countries at the time—hence affording the magnificent monastery built to honor that voyage.
In the area is also a monument to Henry and his sailors (along with a map that spelled out when and where Portugal became a global power, with trading posts scattered from Macau to Malacca, to Goa, to Mozambique and Madagascar, and Angola). One ironic outcome was the Pope’s division of the colonial world of the Americas between the Spanish and the Portuguese, with Portugal getting Brazil (whose gold furnished the second gold era in Portuguese history, and whose territory furnished a refuge for the royal family, who fled Brazil during the Napoleonic wars and settled in Brazil); that happened in the 15 th century when Portugal and Spain were the great colonial powers.
There’s also a stunning fort/tower that guards the entrance to the Tagus River, where Lisbon sets, that provides stunning pictures even 500 years later.
I enjoyed going back yesterday with the group, partly because our guide was so good—and I also had some free time to explore places I hadn’t been on Thursday, including a maritime museum that talked about how the Portuguese developed ships that were capable of oceanic exploration.
The group tour was done at 1. That began Fred’s day of doing things he hadn’t done before, starting with the local pastries for lunch (one of the treats of Europe!), then a climb by tram up the hill that gives Lisbon its significant location (the capital of Portugal since 1547, when the then-king decided he liked it better) and views. The castle/fort was Celtic (I think), the Lusitania, a tribe that resisted the Romans unsuccessfully, then Roman, the Moorish, then Portuguese, more reflected in archeology than in the existing building (a recreation of the old built by Franco’s contemporary as dictator of Portugal from the 1920s until the 1960s; he specialized in grand buildings reflecting Portugal’s distant past); on the way down from the hill, I visited the Se (Cathedral) that was built on the site of the mosque (fairly common in the Muslim-Christian battles) whose most charming feature is the “Treasury” of artefacts, and a cloister that is being restored, but which had unearthed Roman/Muslim/medieval ruins underneath. Then the church that marks the birthplace of St. Anthony (a local patron saint).
In the evening, I learned that the Museum of the Orient was opened till 10, and that turned out to be THE museum I really would have wanted to see. Focusing on the Portuguese presence in Asia, it featured the Portuguese connection with Macao, and was almost as much fun as being in Macao (but that was in January). A video highlighted a number of places I’d been to, and some I hadn’t. Turned out that one of the homes had been the residence of Luis Camoes, Portugal’s “Shakespeare,” who I learned had gotten into trouble in Portugal and was saved from execution by going to the East; he settled in Macao. The museum was a nice complement to the new one in Macao, which also featured Luso-Chinese art, artefacts, and life. Portuguese is still one of the official languages in Macao (siempre pronto is the Scout motto there—be prepared!); even though there were never very many Portuguese in that colony, the first foreign enclave inChina (whose importance diminished after Britain seized Hong Kong) and the last—it went quietly to China in 1999—there is still a strong Portuguese-Macao connection; there are also some wonderful collections which form the basis of the museum. I went to bed ecstatic.
Saturday was another splendid day, marked by the exploration/tour of two of the ruling family’s palaces—one nearby, and one in the town of Sintra, which is near the ocean.
The Sintra one was built on the site of a Muslim governor’s palace, and has some of the arches and tilework from that period. The main escape residence for the royal family (which could include up till 30 children, not all from the same woman!), it is housed in a town rather like Sinaia in Romania—the rich built cottages around the palace, and the artists/tourists/nouveaux riche have made it their playground today. It’s a great location for a sardine lunch, I discovered!
The palaces don’t really match the Romanov’s in Russia (happily!), partly because they tended to be built before the era of Louis XIV, who made Versailles the benchmark. And they tended (if I can believe our guide) to rest on the exploitation of the colonies, rather than the exploitation of the peasantry. Though Portugal overthrew the monarchy exactly 100 years ago (and had 40 years of “monarchical dictatorship” of Salazar, that led to disastrous wars to try to preserve what was left of the empire in Africa—Angola), there were neat touches to the palace grounds, especially a tiled waterway used for boating; tiles here help distinguish the architecture.
We’re about to embark for Porto, the second largest city in Portugal—and the home of one of its most famous products—Port. I’ll wine later.