Churches and monasteries, Lisbon

The Roman Catholic Cathedral of St Mary Major is also located in Alfama. It is the oldest church in Lisbon and dates from 1147. The cathedral was renovated at the beginning of the 20th century after suffering a lot of damage in various earthquakes. It is quiet and peaceful inside.

Just in front of the Se is the church of the patron saint of Lisbon, Santo Antonio. Its location is said to be where the saint was born, and you can follow his history in the attached museum. Like the cathedral it sits beneath it is less impressive outside than inside, but the interior is esquisite. It's a great place for a wedding, and I was lucky enough to be invited to my friend's here.

Like many cathedrals in Portugal the one in Lisbon is much more functional than florid. It feels more like a fortress than the ornate architecture of Notre Dam or St Paul's. It also has a New World feel to it, which is fitting as it sits on the edge of the Old.

Its design is not surprising, considering its history. It was built in 1150 to commerate the city's liberation from the Moors. Significantly it was built on top of the city's main mosque, symbolically supplanting the power of the old regime's religion with that of the new.

Unlike most cathedrals it doesn't dominate the Alfalma district it finds itself in, and is hidden away behind many buildings. It's small, low, indistinct, and quite difficult to locate in the maze like streets of the old Arabic souk. I think the parish church in my home town might actually be bigger.

The year was 1755. It was exactly on November 1, 1755, a date now so infamous in the annals of Portugal's history that will be forever etched and embedded in the consciousness of every Portuguese for all its existence. The great earthquake it's been called that shook and destroyed Portugal and left a devastating and an incalculable tragedy to this nation but mostly to Lisbon. At that time, Lisbon was crowned in all Europe as the most beautiful city and place of all.

And this date, that very day which was a Sunday no less, could not have been chosen by any ill-advised higher power as the resulting ill-begotten thought which inevitably produced horrific consequences....for November 1st is the day of the souls whereby on that very early morning when the Convento do Carmo (Church of the Carmelites) was packed to the gills with worshippers for the first mass. All told there were more than 40,000 citizens of Lisbon that perished from the great earthquake, a devastation which triggered a tsunami and immense conflagration destroying literally the entire city and flattenning out the nerve center of Lisbon. What remained of the city were meager portions evinced to this day by the hilly neighborhoods of Bairro Alto and the Alfama. The 1755 earthquake was of wide-ranging in its after effects that it was felt all thru Scotland and way out island of Jamaica. Even the French writer Voltaire made note of it in his novel Candide.

The Convento do Carmo which was in that period the largest church in all of Lisbon, her roof and all its upper structure fell to earth and for the most part emptied the church. What has remained are its arches, buttresses, columns and side altars left standing to this day open to the skies and the elements as a monument and testament to that spectacular tragic event of 1755...scarred, deformed but solemnly beautiful and defiant.

The Carmo, as is known to Lisboates, continues to function as a spiritual inspiration somehow serving as an open museum as well as a venue for many artistic events. It also houses the Museu Arqueologico do Carmo whose miscellaneous collection is worth visiting. There's a small fee required to enter/visit the skeletal convent.

Hymn to a Beautiful Ruin

(The Ruins of Carmo)

You forget that there is something there
Left behind - proof and defiance - all those
Irremeable years
And memory has mistaken it as all destroyed.

Your eyes the ones dead and enslaved by new things
Turn
Turn your gaze to her
Look now if you haven't since stopped to
Notice her folded wings and resurgence
Light has so penetrated from a
Rambling collapse.

Now nothing but extreme beauty
As a result open to all...the skies and conjurations
Spirit and the elements
Stones that are afterlife.

-Solodancer-

One of the most remarkable remains in Lisbon's cathedral is the baptismal sink, were Saint Anthony was baptized in 1195, in a chapel decorated with tiles, illustrating the saint preaching to the fish.

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Built in 1150 in the place of a former mosque, this church suffered from several earthquakes, and subsequent rebuilding. Many elemnts were kept, some other added, thus becoming a mix of styles.

The church is open to the public but the visit to the Gothic cloister is paid, 2.50 € by adult, with discount to children and senior.

One hot summer afternoon...you find yourself in Lisbon, and after having seen already the many obligatory sights, you ask of yourself 'where is there a place in this city where I will be astonished, feel breathless, captivated and be tenderly pushed into an other worldliness from the usual self?'

There is a place in Lisbon, a very special place, to where you can go to lose the self into a kind of silence that lives within the long corridors between arches and ancient columns. One hot summer soon...or at any time. The place is the cloisters of the Hieronymite Monastery (Mosteiro dos Jeronimos) located in the Belem district.

A visit to this magnificent cloisters is to go thru the equally magnificent church, the Santa Maria de Belem, among the many facets of the monastery built as an homage to the safe return of Vasco da Gama's discovery of quick passage to the East opening the trade route to India. Others for new lands loaded with cargoes of finds, spices, silk, precious stones and gold for a mighty empire under the command of Dom Manuel I.

One must come, see and experience the cloisters if only and just to embrace its superlative architectural coda. It is an epitome of the dashing Manueline architectural style. You will never find anywhere a more stunning cloisters. It hugs around the center of the monastery - in two tiers - like a good belt, with arches, of endless traceries of floral and seafaring motifs - precisely the cornerstone of Manueline architecture. There are rounded bays, balustrades, delicately etched pillars, carved images, angels, gargoyles and a flood of great light. Above, is the unremitting open skies.

The cloisters was designed by two architects. The upper storey by Diogo Boitac and the lower storey by Joao de Castilho.

The monastery was built in 1502 as an offering to St. Jerome, King Manuel's patron saint.

Best time to visit it is during mid-week when the mad-rush of visitors are thinner. An afternoon here when the sun bathes the cloisters with light and shadow is magical with impressions.

A few meters east of Terreiro do Paço, a splendid Manueline door reveals this church. As almost everything in low Lisbon, by the river, it is a reconstruction from the 18th century, in this case of a former church, built upon a Jewish synagogue.