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Madeira - History |
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Port Lisboa, ancient Olisipo, city (1987 est. pop. 831,000), W Portugal, capital of Portugal, of Estremadura prov., and of Lisboa dist., on the Tagus River where it broadens to enter the Atlantic Ocean. Lisbon is Portugal's largest city and its cultural, administrative, commercial, and industrial hub. It has one of the best harbors in Europe, handling a large trade. Agricultural and forest products and fish are exported. The city's industries include the production of textiles, chemicals, and steel; oil and sugar refining; and shipbuilding. A large transient and tourist trade is drawn to Lisbon, which is set on seven terraced hills. The Castelo de São Jorge, a fort that dominates the city, may have been built by the Romans on the site of the citadel of the early inhabitants, who traded with Phoenician and Carthaginian navigators. The Romans occupied the town in 205 B.C. It was conquered by the Moors in 714. The city's true importance dates, however, from 1147, when King Alfonso I, with the help of Crusaders, drove out the Moors. Alfonso III transferred (c.1260) his court there from Coimbra, and the city rose to great prosperity in the 16th cent. with the establishment of Portugal's empire in Africa and India. Although many of the old buildings were destroyed by earthquakes, particularly the disastrous earthquake of 1755, some of the medieval buildings remain. The old quarter, the picturesque and crowded Alfama, surrounds the 12th-century cathedral (rebuilt later). The new quarter, built by the marqués de Pombal after the great earthquake, centres about a large square, the Terreiro do Paço. Some of the well-known buildings in and near Lisbon are the Renaissance Monastery of São Vicente de Fora, with the tombs of the Braganza kings; the Church of St. Roque, with the fine Chapel of St. John (built by John V in the 18th cent.); and the magnificent monastery at Belém, on the north bank of the Tagus facing the sea, built by Manuel I to commemorate the discovery of the route to India by Vasco da Gama. Camões was born in Lisbon. The Univ. of Lisbon (originally founded 1292, but transferred to Coimbra in 1537), was re-established in Lisbon in 1911. In 1966 the Salazar Bridge, one of the world's longest (3,323 ft/1,013 m) suspension bridges, was completed across the Tagus, linking Lisbon with the Setual Peninsula. Bibliography: See David Wright and Patrick Swift, Lisbon (1971). |
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