Introduction
Lisbon has a long history as a city. It was established as a municipium under Julius Caesar in 205 BC. It was ruled by several Germanic tribes from the 5th century. It was captured by the Moors in the 8th century. In 1147, it was reconquered by the crusaders. Since then, it has been a major political, economic, social, and cultural center of Portugal. There is something strange about Lisbon. It has never been officially confirmed as the capital of Portugal. It has earned that status It has achieved that status through convention.
Lisbon is not only a part of Portugal; it is a part of the European Union. In this new capacity, it hosts two of its agencies: The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) and the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA). It also is the headquarters for the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP).
If one goes further back in time, one finds other layers of cultural space in the cultural geography of Lisbon. During the Neolithic period, the area was inhabited by Iberian-related peoples. They built megaliths, stone religious monuments. The Celts once covered all of Europe and parts of the Near East. Hence, it is not surprising that they were also housed in what is now Lisbon. Later, Phoenicians had trading posts in the area on the southern slope of Castle Hill. The estuary of the river Tagus provided the Phoenicians with a great location for their settlements. They called the city of Lisbon allis ubbo (Phoenician: safe harbor). From this estuary, they traded salted fish and Lusitanian horses. Many of these cultural spaces can still be found in the different city districts that constitute modern Lisbon.
The City Districts
Lisbon, the city of explorers, is the main economic sub-region of the country of Portugal. It was the first true world city within an empire that spread over several continents. This empire ranged from South America (Brazil) to Asia (Macao in China and Goa in India). The population of Lisbon is around 3.34 million. Currently, the area of Greater Lison is the wealthiest and most important financial region of the Iberian Peninsula. On the western side of the city is the Monsanto Forest Park, the largest urban park in Europe. Lisbon has several districts within the city.
Alfama |
This is the oldest surviving area of the city. Its name comes from the Arabic Al-hamma, meaning fountains or bath. During the times of Moorish domination, Alfama constituted the whole of the city. It still has Moorish walls. Although the Great Earthquake of 1755 destroyed many parts of Lisbon, it did not destroy the Alfama. It has remained a picturesque labyrinth of narrow streets and small squares. There are many places in Alfama where one can hear the melancholy music of the Fados played on the Arabic guitar and sung by mournful voices. These nostalgic songs are about the sea and the life of the poor. Alfama was inhabited by the fishermen and the poor. This was reflected in the condition of its neighborhoods. Many of these areas are undergoing urban renewal. |
Baixa |
This is downtown Lisbon, the heart of the city. It was completely rebuilt after the Great Earthquake of 1755. It was done in neoclassical design. It was one of the finest architectural developments of the time. It remains an imposing district with elegant squares full of pedestrians. There are many beautifully designed cobble-stoned pavements in the city. Rossio is one of the liveliest squares in Baixa with its many outdoor cafes. |
Bairro Alto |
Bairro is a traditional district where older people shop for groceries, and the younger generations visit art galleries and bookshops. Bairro alto (high quarter) is situated on a hilltop and this vantage point provides wonderful views across the city and down to the waterfront. Since the 1990s, Bairro Alto went through major changes. Lisbon's city council made extensive repairs, and dozens of new restaurants, clubs and trendy shops were opened. Many young people moved into the area. Today, Bairro Alto is the heart of Lisbon's youth culture and nightlife. |
Estrela |
Built in 17th century, Estrela, west of Bairro Alto, is home to diplomatic community and the wealthy neighborhoods. It is a fashionable area of central Lisbon. This area was planned for the wealthy and inhabited by them in the 16th century. It fell into decline during the `9th century and is once more a fashionable area. The 18th century Basílica da Estrela is one of the Lisbon’s most beloved landmarks. |
Belém |
The whole area is closely associated with a time in the past when Lisbon was a city of explorers. It has a natural harbor. The Torre de Belém is one of its more famous landmarks. This fortified tower was built to commemorate Vasco da Gama’s expedition to the New World during the Age of Great Discoveries. It also functioned as a defense system located at the mouth of the Tagus River. |
Grande Lisboa (Greater Lisbon)
The city of Lisbon is defined by a perimeter that was defined historically. Greater Lisbon includes several administratively defined cities that surround Lisbon. These cities are part of the metropolitan perimeter of the Lisbon.
Amadora |
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Queluz |
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Cacém |
This city is located in the municipality of Sintra. The official name of this city is Agualva-Cacém. |
Odivelas |
This is a suburban area that is undergoing urban renewal. |
Loures |
This is a city and a municipality of Lisbon. The municipality is divided into three areas. The north is rustic, the south is urban, and the east is urban-industrial. It has a population of about 200,000. |
Sacavém |
This city is well-known for its ceramics. The terrain is relatively flat. It ranges from sea-level near the Tagus River to 197 feet above sea-level nears its border. Sacavém was important during several periods of Portuguese History. It dates back to human presence in the area in Neolithic times. Two major Roman roads (via XV and XVI ran through Sacavém. This area was under Moorish rule and was reconquered in the Middle Ages. All of these aspects make up the cultural space of the city. |
Almada |
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Barreiro |
This city is located in the district of Setubal. Barreiro means clay pit. It is largely a suburban area. |
Seixal |
The city is named after a smooth stone that can be found nearby rivers. The locality is famous for its sea industry which includes navy repairs and construction, fishing and other maritime industries. |
Oeiras |
This city is in conurbation with Lisbon. It is one of the most populous towns in Portugal. It is located near the Tagus River (rio tejo). There are several commercial and industrial facilities in the area, One of the major ones is the Sociedade Independente de Comunicação, Portuguese television and media network. Another is TVI - Televisão Independent, television channel 4, a large media company. Because of these media companies, many other multinational companies have relocated here: Netjets. Microsoft, Sisco (a software company), General Electric, and Nokia (a cell phone company. |
This is a satellite city of Lisbon. It is the most densely populated municipality of Portugal. Though population growth and physical expansion, it has merged with Lisbon to form a continuous urban and industrial area. Amadora is in conurbation (Geddes, 1950) with Lisbon. Both cities share the same subway, bus, and train network. Amadora is home to a large number of African immigrants, mostly from Angola and Cape Verde. These are Portuguese speaking countries. The Aqueduto das Águas Livres), which brings water from the hills of Sintra to Amadora. This masonry arch was built in 1770. It is the largest ever built.
This city is located in Sintra, a municipality of Lisbon. The main attraction in this city is the national palace (Palácio Nacional de Queluz) which was the last rococo building constructed in Europe. It was built as the summer retreat of Dom Pedro of Braganza. It is called the Portuguese Versailles. 
This is a coastal municipality. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Tagus River. The 25 de Abril suspension bridge connects Almada to Lisbon. It is the largest suspension bridge in Europe.
The Hegemony of the Moors in Portugal
In 711, Lisbon was taken by the Moors. They were Muslims from North Africa and the Middle East. They built many mosques and houses characteristic of their culture in Lisbon. They also erected a new city wall (Cerca Moura) and Arabic was forced on the diverse citizenry (Christians, Jews, Berbers and Saqalibas) of Lisbon as the official language. Mozarabic was the mother tongue spoken by the Christian population and Islam was the official religion. The Christians were allowed to keep their religion but they had to pay for that privilege.
Did the mixing of these different cultures impact on the cultural space of Lisbon? The answer is evident in the music of Lisbon, especially in the Fados, and it is evident in the architecture of the region. In the Alfama, the oldest region of Lisbon that survived the Earthquake of 1755, the Moorish influence is quite evident in the names of the streets and in the architectural styles of the buildings.
In 1147, crusader knights led by Alfonso I of Portugal sieged the area and reconquered Lisbon putting it under Christian rule. The Moorish overlords were expelled. These events happened during the Second Crusade under Pope Eugene III who authorized a crusade in the Iberian Peninsula. The war against the Moors had been going on for hundreds of years the Pope enlisted forces of the Castillians, Leonese, and Aragonese within the region to embark on this crusade.
Lisboa Fado (Destiny)
Portugal has always been at the crossroads of several cultures. From this cultural complex a very unique kind of music has emerged known as os fados (destiny or fate). There are several theories about how os fados, the melancholic songs of fate and destiny, originated in Lisbon. One theory holds that these came about through Moorish songs characteristically associated with the quarter of Mouraria in Lisbon. There are many references in fado lyrics that support this claim (Montaigne, 2003). Musicologists associate these songs to the modinhas (sentimental love songs) that were successful among the middle-class social circles in the later 18th century. A more realistic account is that these songs came from the working-class sectors of cities such as Alfama, Castelo, Mouraria, Bairro Alto and Madrugao. Later, they were heard by the middle-classes frequenting these establishments. They began to sing these songs, but they were not the source of that musical genre. After all, the most popular themes in the fados were saudade (nostalgic stories of every day life in the traditional sections of Lisboa (Colvin, 2008).
The Lisboa fado that is known throughout the world today can be (and often is) accompanied by the Portuguese guitar (guitarra portuguesa), These can be seen and hear in the casas de fado (fado houses) in Lisbon. As noted earlier, the most commonly accepted explanation, at least when speaking about Lisbon Fado, is that it came from the songs of the Moors, who continued to reside near Lisbon even after the area reverted to the Christians. Not only do the song of the Moors share in the sadness and melancholy of those songs, they also share in the melodic rhythms of those songs (Richle, 2001).
The Age of Discovery
For many centuries there had been three main trade routes from the east to the Mediterranean and Europe. One was a long journey overland from China across Central Asia to the Black Sea, by ship from India to the Persian Gulf, and then overland over Baghdad or Damascus to Mediterranean ports. When the goods reached these ports, they were then monopolized by the northern Italian city-states, especially Venice or Genoa, which distributed the products throughout Europe. Venice made its wealth by being a maritime nation that acted as a major intermediary in the transfer of spices and other goods from China. Spices, it should be noted, were not a luxury for the Europeans. During the winter, they had to eat meat from animals that had been slaughtered in the fall. By the time that it was consumed the meat was spoiled. They needed spices to disguise the taste and smell. Prices in Europe for these goods were high, and profits were good. The Venetians had a monopoly on these trade routes and the Portuguese wanted to find their own route to the Indies and break the Venetian control of the importing of spices. The only way that they could do this was by discovering new sea lanes and placing them under their own control.
King Diniz knew that he had to improve Portugal's emerging navy. He invited a Genoese sea captain to Portugal and placed him in charge of developing the mercantile and naval fleets. The first exploration was to the Canary Islands in 1341. This journey marked the age of exploration.
The next stage in the age of exploration began with Prince Henry who ordered one of his most trusted captains, Gil Eanes, to round Cape Bojador, a headland on the western coast pf the Sahara. It was feared that no one could survive such a journey. Eanes turned back fifteen times before finally passing it in 1433. Within a decade after Eanes' breakthrough, Prince Henry's ships began to bring gold dust and slaves back from the African coast. When Prince Henry died in 1460, some 1500 miles of African coastline had been discovered and partially mapped, and the Azores and Madeira Islands were active colonies. The Madeira Islands were discovered in the Atlantic ocean in 1419, and in 1427 the Azores. The Portuguese settled these islands as colonies.
In the next two decades, Portuguese captains made more progress, venturing down the northwestern coast of Africa. This gave the Portuguese a tremendous advantage over other European nations. They also improved their ship design and navigation. They wee able to determine their latitude by sighting the North Star through an Astrolabe and measuring the distances. They made improvements in navigational instruments that led to refinements in the field of cartography. The Portuguese maps in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were the best in Europe.
Although Price Henry the Navigator began participated in the age of exploration, he was not the only one. Ferdinand Magellan was also a Portuguese maritime explorer who played an important role at this time. He became one of the first individuals to cross all the meridians of the globe. He was the first person to lead an expedition sailing westward from Europe to Asia and to cross the Pacific Ocean. Pedro Álvares Cabral was a Portuguese navigator and explorer. Cabral is generally regarded as the European discoverer of Brazil on April 22, 1500. Vasco da Gama was a Portuguese explorer, one of the most successful in the European Age of Discovery. He was the commander of the first ships to sail directly from Europe to India. These noted navigators remain as part of the cultural space of Portugal. They are honored in the monuments and status of the city of Belém and they are honored in the history books, records of deeds and accomplishments of the old-past.
Why did the Portuguese take to the Ocean Seas? What made the civilization of the Renaissance turn to discovery? What drove them to leave their native lands? Some have argued that the spirit of exploration was already intrinsic to the milieu of the renaissance. Others have argued that these journeys were a continuation of the evangelical spirit of the Crusades. In order for these traditions of the past to play a role in the cultural space of the age of exploration, they would had to be renewed over and over again through symbolic maintenance (Mehan and Wood, 1975). A better motive is economic. They wanted to have more of the luxuries from the Far East. They were there waiting for them and all that they had to do was to find a new way of getting there. By taking to the open seas, they accomplished these economic and cultural motives. They wanted to have more pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves. There was a lure for spices. Without the advances in naval technology, many of these journeys would have never been accomplished. Without the famous navigators themselves and their crews, the age of exploration would remain as just a dream.
The Great Earthquake of 1755
Foucault (1969) used the metaphor of the archeology of knowledge in his approach to the study of history. He argued that history exists in layers or strata of information that originated in the past and emerge in the present as the contemporary layer of cultural knowledge. There are times, however, when the present and the past co-exist in time. This happens when there is an epistemic rupture and the layers of the past and the present are broken apart and juxtaposed to each other. In this situation, the layers of the past are exposed in the present. 
By excavating the past, Foucault argues, one can begin to better understand the present. What kinds of events constitute epistemic ruptures? What kinds of events totally reorient the sociology of everyday life? There are many examples of these ruptures of cultural and social knowledge. One is a major war. Battles destroy people and take them out of their normal patterns of living and place them into situations having to do with survival. No one wins in a war. It is a devastating experience for both sides. The Great Plague is another example of an epistemic rupture. When the Plague entered into Europe in the Middle Ages, it decimated the popular. In some cities, 80% of the population was destroyed. Social structures changed and how society viewed itself before the plague was transformed into a new social structure. The kind of epistemic rupture that is the focus of this chapter is the great earthquake. One of these happened in Lisbon in 1755 and it transformed that city.
Although the earthquake of 1755 was not the strongest or most deadly in human history, its impact was profound and lasting (Fonseca, 2004). The earthquake occurred in several European countries, but it is always referred to as "The Great Lisbon Earthquake." In 1755, Lisbon was one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. The city retained some of its Moorish influence during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Soon after the earthquake, several fires broke out. Many inhabitants fled from their homes and left fires burning. Narrow streets full of fallen debris prevented access to the fire sites. The public squares filled with people and their rescued belongings, but as the fire approached, these squares were abandoned, and the fire reached catastrophic proportions. The flames raged for five days. All of the downtown area was totally or partially burned. Immediately after the earthquake, many inhabitants of Lisbon looked for safety on the sea by boarding ships moored on the river. About 30 minutes after the quake, a large wave swamped the area near the mouth of the Tagus. The area in the western part of the city was the most heavily damaged by the wave. A total of three waves struck the shore. Boats overcrowded with refugees capsized and sank (Brooks, 1994). The earthquake was a natural event, however, it did disrupt the cultural space of Lisbon and it has been incorporated into its cultural history. People are reminded of this event. It was an epistemic rupture.
Concluding Remarks
As noted in the theory of cultural space, the past never dies. It is always revised, reinvented, and reinterpreted in the present. One is introduced to Lisbon and its past but that past is always situated in a cultural space. The various districts of Lisbon are cultural spaces. So are the municipalities of greater Lisbon. The monuments and the buildings that one sees in that city are ontological markers of the past. In particular, time is embedded in cultural space. As a consequence, one needs to contextualize time within a cultural space in order to better understand the cultural spaces of Lisbon.
How does one discuss the urban spatial structure of a city? There are three models having to do with the organization of urban space. One is the Zonal Model by Ernst Burgess, who was an urban sociologist from the University of Chicago. He worked with Roderick D. McKenzie, and Robert Ezra Park in the Chicago School of Sociology (McKenzie, Park, and Burgess, 1967.) He conceptualized the city as being made of concentric zones.
At the center was the Central Business District (CBD). Surrounding this was the factory zone. Next was a zone of transiti0n. This was followed by a working class zone. The next outer circle was the residential zone and finally the commuter zone. This model does not describe Lisbon. A better model is that of the Sectoral Model of Homer Hoyt who argued that cities do not develop in rings, but in sectors. When cities expand, he argued, they do so in a wedge and these eventually become sectors. The districts of Lisbon are concomitant with this model of the urban space of the city during its earlier development when groups of people congregated in certain parts of the city to form ethnic and religious communities.
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Chauncy D. Harris and Edward L. Ulman (1945) developed addressed the issue of the urban space of the city and developed what is known as the multiple nuclei model. These geographers argued that a city has more than one center around which it evolves. Some activities, for example, are attracted to particular nodes while other activities try to avoid them. However, this model could better account for Lisbon after the Great Earthquake of 1755.
