Lisbon’s Baixa neighbourhood, ravaged by natural disasters in the 18th century, is a design lesson in reconstruction that breathes harmony and order.
Monocle touches down in Lisbon early next month for our annual Quality of Life Conference. For some, the design of the Portuguese capital echoes saudade, a romantic form of longing for an absent person, place or time. To satiate this yearning, most visitors turn their attention to the yellow trams winding up the 16th-century cobbled streets but in doing so, they often miss a different vision of the city – one built on boldness, foresight and rationalism – in its downtown Baixa neighbourhood.
The reconstruction of this locale is an epic tale that begins with a crisis of biblical proportions. In 1755, Lisbon was struck by an earthquake, followed by a fire and a tsunami, that left thousands dead and much of the city in ruins. Enter Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo – later known as the Marquis of Pombal – a minister who seized the moment to transform the city’s urban fabric and, ultimately, its society. Three years after the catastrophe, De Carvalho e Melo’s team of engineers and architects produced a plan for Lisbon’s reconstruction – a revolutionary document considered by many to be the first modern urban plan in the Western world, predating Haussmann’s Paris by a century.
Under this 1758 blueprint, housing, commerce, mobility, sanitation and, crucially, the financing of reconstruction were all accounted for. Streets were levelled and straightened into grids; land was parcelled into standardised blocks. Stone window frames and wooden slabs were made uniform, allowing for off-site prefabrication. Each building was reinforced by a cage of timber beams, known today as the gaiola pombalina, to withstand earthquakes.
Baixa was reimagined as a whole. It’s now home to landmark structures such as the Praça do Comércio gate (pictured, left) and the neo-gothic Elevador de Santa Justa (pictured, right). The city remade itself in the language of the Enlightenment, shifting from a medieval landscape of alleys and cloisters to one of wide boulevards, where commerce thrived and a middle class emerged. Today the measured elegance of Lisbon’s Baixa endures. Visitors who look beyond the havoc of tourists, tuk-tuks and souvenir shops that now crowd the streets can still admire the harmony and order of a city centuries ahead of its time. The neighbourhood has become a global benchmark for architects looking to reshape their own metropolises, proving that saudade can be transformed from transient beauty into permanent urban-design wonder.
Gaia Lutz is Monocle’s Lisbon correspondent.For more opinion, analysis and insight,subscribeto Monocle today.
Join the fun: Join us for Monocle’s annual Quality of Life Conference in Lisbon from 3 to 5 September, where we’ll meet the people who know how to deliver better quality of life for all.
