Lisbon in Winter Light: photo blog
All photos © Kirsty Hughes
Lisbon is a city of many layers – of grand vistas and narrow, steep streets, up and down its many hills, where buildings perch almost on top of each other. It’s a city of hope, of light, of arrivals and departures.
It’s a city that looks out eastwards to the Atlantic and south across the broad, often glistening, estuary of the Tejo (Tagus) river towards the Algarve and beyond to north Africa.
The first time I visited many decades ago, my train journey, from the south, ended on the southern shore of the Tagus before I boarded a ferry, with the other passengers, to reach the centre of this most westerly of mainland European capital cities. Today, ferries still dot the estuary, heading to the towns, villages and suburbs of the southern shore while other ships both large and small can also be spotted heading out towards the ocean. Beyond the ferry terminal, two large cruise ships squat at anchor.
The ferries arrive at the Praça do Comércio, one of Lisbon’s grandest squares. A slanting winter sun casts lines of light through the arcades that surround it on three sides.
On through the towering Arco da Augusta, the narrower, smart shopping streets of the central Chiado area sit in an organised grid, rebuilt after the 1755 earthquake and again after a devastating fire in 1988.
There are gentle Christmas decorations strung across the streets, some white flags fluttering, and smoke rises further down some streets from the stalls roasting chestnuts on braziers.
Lisbon’s complex history can be seen across its streets, squares and buildings. In 2024, Portugal will celebrate fifty years since Portuguese democracy was established in the ‘carnation’ revolution of 1974, finally demolishing the decades of fascism and authoritarianism.
I sit in one square for coffee, and then notice a set of billboards in one corner, in Portuguese only, about the events of 1974. Lisbon’s iconic red suspension bridge, connecting Lisbon to Almada to its south, was renamed the bridge of 25 April after the 1974 revolution.
The São Jorge castle, that dominates one part of Lisbon’s skyline, encapsulates one big chunk of that history – with settlements on the hill dating back over two thousand years, the castle’s battlements first built by the Moors in the 10th and 11th centuries, and Portugal’s first king defeating the Moors there in 1147. Portugal’s long history of exploration, empire and colonialism – including its major role in the Atlantic slave trade – began 200 to 300 years later.
The old and new jostle together in Lisbon. The tram runs out westwards to Belém, attracting tourists to visit the 16th century Jerónimos monastery, but just across the street lies the modern Cultural Centre of Belém, hosting permanent and temporary exhibitions, its galleries sitting around some peaceful internal squares, and with calm cafes and restaurants (one overlooking the Tagus) in the complex too.
Before visiting the Cultural Centre, I walk further west along the Tagus with a view in the distance of the Atlantic, passing the Torre de Belém, a sixteenth century fortification near the mouth of the river.
As I then make my way to the Cultural Centre, I come first, by chance, into an exhibition in its basement, the Garagem Sul, where the Architecture Centre has put on an exhibition ‘Living in Lisbon’ on the housing crisis in Lisbon, driven not least by the sharp increase in tourism and in foreign purchases of real estate, in the last decade. It’s a tough political issue facing many European, including Scottish, cities (and beyond). Here, they present “the most charismatic architectural housing strategies” from the last 50 years of democracy.
It's an issue I run into twice more in my time in Lisbon. One day, I make my way to the photographic archive of the city of Lisbon, nearby the run-down Praça Martim Monez – a square where tattered mattresses and the odd tent speak of homelessness, young men hang around, there’s a smell of dope in the air. At the archive, there’s a temporary photographic exhibition downstairs, a permanent library upstairs. The exhibition is labelled only in Portuguese so I’m not sure of its theme, but afterwards I talk to a woman at the desk in English who explains the topic is homelessness. We chat for a while about the housing crisis in Portugal, at home in Scotland, and elsewhere – young people unable to get housing, evictions, excessive tourism, inequality and all the familiar problems.
The next day I come across an old mansion house with a big banner reading Open Europe hanging down its front. Inside, a young woman explains there’s a series of seminars and some public events looking at sustainable and quality architecture that works for people and the planet. She gives me a pamphlet with sustainable tourism suggestions for visiting Lisbon – off the beaten track a little. I go upstairs to its small café in this graceful but faded building just as a lively, chattering group of young people spill out from one event. It’s a moment of hope despite the challenges. Much energy and imagination going into solutions. Open Europe this year links 17 cities across Europe and more around the world (but no Scottish ones so far).
I always find Lisbon to be a city which is endlessly easy to wander in and find something new. Its graceful buildings are sometimes smartly renovated, other times their grandeur fading behind rusting balconies. Beautiful street lamps, in diverse styles, adorn buildings and arcades.
Tram lines cross the sky when you look up. Step into a church or other building and chances are you’ll come across some of the iconic azulejos – tiles, mostly but not only blue and white.
Graffiti in many places speaks of youth and vibrancy and protest – one statue draped with a Palestinian keffiyeh.
It’s in many ways a green city. The beautiful botanic gardens – palm trees stretching up into the sky, broad and high cactus bushes – tell you it’s not northern Europe.
So too do outdoor cafes, daytime and evening, under the trees that line the broad Avenida Liberdade, and the regular gathering of people, mostly young, to enjoy the sunset, even in December, amidst the trees, from the small but lovely Jardim do Torel park.
Once darkness falls, after sunset at 5.15 pm (it never gets dark earlier than that), there are plenty of bars and restaurants to choose from, including the small traditional tavernas, sometimes down a few steps – half-basement, producing three course meals on some variant of the soup, fish, flan menu plus wine for 15 euros or less.
On one walk around the Bairro Alto and Chiado, I find myself in front of the modern art museum. It’s a lovely old building and multi-layered as so much of Lisbon.
I ask one young woman how old it is, and the answer is complex, one part is 200 years old, half destroyed in the 18th century fire, and it’s anyway part of several buildings, some (through one wall) are part of the university. There’s a thought-provoking, varied sculpture exhibition, ‘Rare Earth’ (on until the end of February) by the Germany-based, English sculptor, Tony Cragg. And later I realise, back in Praça do Comércio, there are three of his large modern sculptures there too – not even fighting for space (the square is so big and open) with the very tall Christmas tree that also occupies that side of the square.
It's hard to visit Lisbon from Edinburgh and not see some of the many similarities – each has a centuries-old castle, sits on an estuary, has winding old streets and grander, newer ones, has a ton of cultural energy. Portugal too has a very different feel to its larger neighbour Spain (for a good read on Atlantic Portugal and Mediterranean Spain, see this Financial Times article from December).
But in Lisbon’s multi-layered vibrancy, I’m aware too of its confident role in the European Union as a smaller member state, and in the world – Portugal’s former prime minister, Antonio Guterres now secretary general of the UN. Scotland still has European networks despite Brexit. But Portugal, fifty years, after its 1974 democratic revolution and after joining the EU in 1986 is a dynamic, fully paid-up, core member of the EU family. Lisbon speaks to that history, to the many centuries before it, and to the future too.