What to visit in Lisbon

King Alfonso Henrique, known as Alfonso I, or The Conqueror, waited just three years from his last battle against the Muslims in the Castelo de San Jorge, to command the  building of a cathedral to strengthen the new religion which had been so hard to win. The year was 1150 and the brand new temple was built over the old mosque, in turn executed on a Roman site. Then, Lisbon was just a hamlet of a few thousand souls living around the Alfama district. The new Christian Cathedral, known as Se, from the initials of the “Sede Episcopal”  although located outside the city walls, was at a prudent distance from the Royal Palace, then located in the heart of the Castillo de San Jorge.

The engineering advances that culminated in the stunning Gothic naves had not yet developed and the new temple was designed in the Romanesque prevailing style in those days .  The Sé de Lisboa,  has walls that are so high that it reminds us rather of a defensive wall than a church, a vision completed with its towers, the towers are flanking the entrance with little concession to decoration. The austerity of the interior is in concordance with the exterior walls. Although the temple was divided into several chapels, each dedicated to a particular saint or martyr, the entire cathedral was under the protection of Santa Maria.

Although successive earthquakes, from the fifteenth centruty to the destructive one of 1755, have left their footprints in the oldest Christian church in Lisbon, the scars have been cured with a comprehensive intervention of the twentieth century technology, consolidating and rebuilding its walls to strengthen them. Recent works also have unearthed Roman ,Arabs and Phoenicians ruins who attest to the successive settlements of the city of Lisbon.

While  touring the Cathedral of Lisbon one can not ignore the Chapel of St. Ildefonso with the sarcophagus of one of the first Portuguese ambassadors, Lopo Fernandes Pacheco a  nobleman who is immortalized with a dog at his feet (as a symbolic ancient guide to insure the entrance into the dark side). In the Chapel of St. Anthony of Padua (patron of marriage and marriageable girls) we have the cell in which the monk was baptized in Lisbon. San Antonio de Padua (known by this nickname, despite being a native of Lisbon, because he died in 1231 in the Italian city) was a religious persuasive  speaker and erudite and famous in his time by the success with the conversion of infidels and for the miracle of the multiplication of bread and fish.

As is common when a saint of such prestige, there are two cities fighting for the honor of hosting his body: one is Padua, who claim to have the body of Portuguese monk at the Basilica of San Antonio de Padua and Lisbon Sé  claimed to have moved the remains of San Antonio to his hometown consolidating thus the Christian reconquest.

Candela Vizcaíno

Remember, traveler, before leaving aside any of the apartments in Lisbon The Portuguese capital awaits you with its rich history and culture.

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Translated by: Marc
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