Short history lesson of Lisboa

 

 

 

 

 

I had the opportunity to visited Lisboa to participate at the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine.  I travelled to Lisboa some days before the congress started to bee a tourist in the city, and what a beautiful city.

 

 

 

 

I had the opportunity to visited Lisboa to participate at the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine.

Monument over the fallen in WW I

  I travelled to Lisboa some days before the congress started to bee a tourist in the city, and what a beautiful city.

 

 

 

Just a short distance before it reaches the sea, before it reaches the sea, before its water are lost forever in the immense, silent depts. of the Atlantic Ocean, the banks of the River Tangus widen to form an estuary bathed in the sun’s golden light.  Beautiful Lisbon, capitol of Portugal, stands just at this point in the river.  Along the waterside, the city rises graceful and serene against rugged surroundings, shaped by the presence of seven hills. 

 

 

Its peculiar geographic settings not only helps to shape the personality of the Portuguese capital , but, to the good fortune of locals and visitors alike, has also led to the creation of many excellent viewpoints and establishment of a variety of transport systems, each more charming and picturesque than Lisbon’s trams, lifts and funiculars, beside cutting travelling time and comfortably negotiating the inevitable steep climbs between the different neighbouring in the city, have also became one of the most well loved and delightful images of Lisboa.

 

 

The explanation behind the city’s rational, orderly street layout lies in the earthquake that devastated the city in 1755 and subsequent reconstruction work launched by the Secretary of State, Joao I, Marquis of Pombal.  There were times of the Enlightenment in Europe, and the Marquis firmly believed in its ideas.

 

 

Lisboa is a warm friendly city, full of life and passion, where groups still come together spontaneously to enjoy a conversation or to trill to the melancholic notes and words of a fadosong.

 

 

Lisboa have about 560 000 citizens who enjoys a mild climate in both summer and winter.  The city was founded in the year 800 BC, when the Phoenicians established a settlement that they called Alis Ubbo.  When Rome conquered the Iberian Peninsula 500 years later, Julius Caesar renamed the city Felicitas Julia and granted it the status of municipality.

  The Romans were followed successively by the Vandals, the Visigoths and the Moors, who invaded in 714.  In 1147, Afonso Henrique’s, considered by history as Portugal’s first king, conquered the country for Christianity, supported by an expedition of crusades heading for the Holy Land. 

 

 

Proclaimed as the capital in 1255, Lisboa was hit by it`s major earthquake in 1356, though this was only a prelude to the tremor that in 1755 killed 60 000 people and reduced the city centre to rubble.

 

 

However, before this terrible disaster struck, Lisboa had enjoyed an extraordinary period of growth and development spanning the 15^th and 16^th centuries, the time of the great

 

Portuguese discoveries.  The most outstanding figure this golden age was Manuel I, the king who went down in history as “the lucky one” due to such happy events as Vasco Dagama`s discovery of the Atlantic route India in 1498 and the discovery of Brazil by an expedition led by Pedro Àvares Cabral in 1500.

  The splendour of this time, when the port of Lisboa was considered the most important in the world, was marked by the appearance of “Manueline art”, named in honour of his reign, one so blessed by good fortune.

 

 

Having formed part of Spain from 1580 to 1640, Portugal gained its independence and entered the 18^th century during a new period of economic prosperity.  However, the

 

earthquake of 1755 caucus a sudden change in Lisboans destiny, and the city had first to bury 60 000 victims of the disaster and next to undertake the arduous task of reconstructions.

 

 

The population explosion that began in the mid-19^th century was accompanied by the

 

opening of railway lines and an establishment of a public lighting system.

  24 April Bridge, which ended the century’s long isolation of the south bank districts?  The city’s history was also marked by the fire that destroyed mush of the Chiado district in 1988. 

 

Lisboa was proclaimed European Capital of Culture in 1994.

 

 

As the Portuguese capital enters the 21st century, the spirit of renewable continues to preside over urban planning action past and present.