Tuesday 25 August 2026 – We weren’t due to meet Carlos until midday, so we had a relaxed schedule for the morning. On checkout, we discovered that the hotel’s “finance people”, despite having agreed that the prepayment for our room had, in fact, been made, had still not sent their approval for the reception staff to process a refund for us, so I’m still £400 down on the deal so far. But I’m sanguine that things will get sorted before the credit card bill becomes payable. Yes, really.
Carlos’s wife had enforced a change of plan by requiring use of their car for the day, so we weren’t going to get our lift over to Sintra, not that it mattered. It takes pretty much the same time to get there by car or by train, and Carlos had developed a plan that took us round some parts of the city we hadn’t yet explored, ending up at the station where we needed to catch the train. Street art was very much still a theme in what we saw, but in the posher parts of town. We headed up Rua Augusta but veered off to the left, into the Chiado area of the city, where a lot of the buildings were very ritzy
and smartly decorated, both outside
and in
This was a pie shop. Well, a rather nice pastelaria, which featured top notch pastel de natas and perfectly decent coffee, so we partook whilst Carlos expanded somewhat on the fire of Chiado, a tragedy which happened exactly 38 years ago – August 25 1988. The fire started at a department store in Rua do Carmo and quickly spread, affecting a total of 18 buildings, of which 11 were full losses with structure collapse. The wooden furnishings in the buildings, and the contents, which included fabrics and gas bottles, contributed to the swift spread of the fire. In 1989 the Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza Vieira was invited by the mayor of Lisbon to oversee the reconstruction project for the area, which was mostly completed by 1999. The exterior look of the buildings was restored, while the interiors needed, of course, to be completely rebuilt according to modern construction techniques and safety regulations. Some original frontages were saved,
and interiors are in some cases still being restored to their former finery;
overall the area still has a grand feel to it.
One particularly striking building is the Casa do Ferreira dos Tabuletas.
It was originally built in 1865 on part of the land once occupied by the 13th-century monastery of Convento da Trindade, by Manuel Moreira Garcia, a wealthy Gilician businessman and Freemason, after religious orders were dissolved in Portugal and the Convent building fell into disuse. The façade is famous for its 19th-century azulejo (ceramic tile) panels created by painter and azulejo artist Luis Ferreira (known as “O Ferreira das Tabuletas“- Ferreira of the panels), featuring allegorical figures representing Earth, Water, Science, and Industry, as well as mythological themes and ornate floral borders. Originally designed for mixed residential and commercial use, it remains one of the most celebrated examples of tile architecture in Lisbon.
Garcia converted another part of the Convent into a cervejaria (pub) which also has a very flamboyant display of azulejas.
Nearby is the Teatro da Trindade – whose name is again a reference to the Convento da Trindade.
A little further along the way was the church of São Roque, which was handsome enough without being distinctive on the outside but ridiculously opulent inside.
There are areas of very lavish tiling,
and the ceiling is remarkable.
What really stands out, though, is the opulence of the nine chapels surrounding the nave. One of them, the Chapel of St. John the Baptist, was mandated by King John V, who ruled as an absolute monarch, riding roughshod over normal political protocols, styled himself after Louis XIV and spent vast amounts of money on architectural projects and specifically this chapel,
which included 20% of the entire gold holdings of the country. He wanted the Pope to come and bless the chapel, but that was never going to happen, so he had it built in Rome, blessed there by the Pope, and then disassembled and reassembled here in Lisbon. No wonder he was unpopular.
Carlos then led us around the streets of Chiado and neighbouring Barrio Alto, showing us some of the street artwork to be found there, some larger scale
and some smaller.
Lisbon has a powerful reputation for its “tagging” (graffiti, to you and me) as well as its artworks, and there’s one slightly amusing point where a brand new building was erected with a sign forbidding graffiti
and right next door to it is the entrance to a theatre – who were happy to allow the artists full rein!
Chiado features a famous café, A Brasileira, one of the three oldest cafés in Lisbon.
Outside it there’s a statue of Fernando Pessoa, a well-known poet who was also a philosopher, playwright, essayist, translator, advertising executive, astrologer, inventor, businessman, commercial correspondent, literary critic, and political commentator – though poetry remained his first love. He was a frequent visitor to A Brasileira under his many heteronyms: Ricardo Reis, Álvaro de Campos, and Alberto Caeiro. The mosaic in the pavement is supposed to represent his long face, and the establishment, like many in this posh area, has its name in the pavement outside.
Inside, it reminds me very much of the Julien Restaurant in Paris – very belle epoque.
Another belle epoque frontage can be found down the street from A Brasileira.
It’s a gelateria now, but has retained the frontage that proclaimed its original purpose – ladies fashion. The whole area was crowded and buzzing, despite it being a Monday; you could tell how busy it was from the number of the taxi-cum-tour buggies parked up awaiting customers.
There are extraordinary numbers of these vehicles roaming the streets of Lisbon, most of them in golf buggy style, some built as replicas of old automobiles, some more like tuktuks. They have all cropped up in the last fifteen years or so, and have become so ubiquitous that the authorities stepped in to regulate them; they are all now electric and restricted to certain parking zones. There must be huge competition between them for business and some owners clearly try to mark theirs out from the norm.
We saw a few more artworks before we finished our time in Lisbon with Carlos.
One was particularly striking, being somewhat three-dimensional.
Even the station is a work of art,
and the artwork didn’t stop at the façade. Even the stairs were decorated
as were the walls by the platforms.
Mind you, the place has its prosaic moments, too.
And so we bade a (temporary) farewell to Lisbon and headed to Sintra on the train. We will be back, and may be able to fit in some more tourism, depending on schedules and weather. But I’ll end this post here and the next one will take up the thread as we arrived in Sintra for our short stay there.
