Charm au Lisbon: A City Made Beautiful by Its Paradoxes

By Alexandra Howe | Travel Writer
All images by Alexandra Howe

In 1755, Lisbon suffered an earthquake so massive it literally rocked Europe into the Classical Age. It was a disaster so enormous it scarred the entire European psyche with the destruction it wreaked on the historical port city. One piece of the extensive infrastructure destroyed was the Praça do Comércio, a sea-front plaza dating back to the Romans that was crucial to the city socially and economically. Following its destruction, it was rebuilt with a vengeance, giving way to some of the most grandiose monuments I've ever seen, swaggering inside a plaza so big that it can easily fit Madrid's Plaza Mayor with room to spare.

Everyone says that Lisbon is charming and they're right - it is the most charming city I've visited as yet. For me, the key to Lisbon's charm lives in these paradoxes: it is simultaneously crumbling and glorious, mid-crisis and flashing its peacock feathers. When I visited Lisbon I stayed in its oldest neighborhood, Alfama, where many buildings escaped the earthquake and date back to the Moors, decorated by the tiles typical of Lisbon that also originated in that era. Immediately on beginning your tour of Lisbon, these tiles alert you to the fact that you're not in just any European city.

What fascinates me about Europe is the visibility of its lineage: the patchwork of novelty and innovation sewn into and around what pieces of ancient history still remain. Much of this visible history has been erased in the Americas - mercifully, architectural wonders still remain from Mexico on down. But in the US, on top of the shameful tragedy of genocide, our history is less of a patchwork and more like a concrete layer laid across your basement floor - clean, fresh, shiny, and more comfortable if you don't think about what you destroyed to get it. Don't get me wrong, we've built our own, diverse and flavorful wonders on that concrete floor, but in Europe that history, both the grand and the tragic, is out in the open: Grandma's patchwork blanket with all the rips and reworked threads of different colors that don't always match but are more beautiful for it.

Lisbon's patchwork is indeed endlessly charming: intricate tiles covering timeworn buildings; lively murals spray-painted the length of narrow, ascending side-street staircases that house minuscule specialty book stores and cutting edge fashion boutiques alike; old brothels converted into trendy bars on the famous Pink Street; ancient trees reaching toward the sea from the mountaintop Castelo, where peacocks roam freely; the ostentatious Arco da Rua Augusta crowning the once-destroyed Praça do Comércio.

For me, Lisbon's charm lies in its paradoxes, the way the ancient muddles with the new, the humble with the flashy, and more than anything, the way disaster is met with unwavering resolve. Earthquakes and economic quandaries bring out Lisbon's charm at its full wattage as it sews another square into that patchwork blanket and wraps you up in it.

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