Though a legend claims Odysseus as Lisbon's founding father, most hard-headed historians date the city's origins to around 1200BC, with the establishment of a Phoenician trading station. Its name then was Alis Ubbo or Olisipo.
People had settled in the area thousands of years before, attracted to its location on a calm river close to the Atlantic Ocean. Around 700BC, Celtic tribes moved into northern and central Portugal, while the coastal settlements were incorporated into the empire of Carthage.
Recorded history of the city begins in 205BC, when the Romans ousted the Carthaginians and created the province of Lusitania, though not without fierce resistance from the Celts. Olisipo was proclaimed a municipality and later renamed Felicitas Julia – the Joy of Julius – by Julius Caesar. The Romans built roads, cultivated grapes, wheat and olives, and bequeathed the foundations of the Portuguese language. As the power of Rome declined, most of the Iberian peninsula was overrun by tribes from north of the Pyrenees. Lisbon fell at the beginning of the 5th century AD, after which successive migratory tribes controlled the city until the Visigoths in the 6th century brought a period of peace.
The Moorish Conquest
In 711, 79 years after the death of the Prophet Mohammed, a great Muslim invasion fleet from North Africa crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, and in just a few years the Moors had conquered most of Iberia. Lisbon became a thriving outpost under Muslim rule. Its castle, begun by the Visigoths, was enlarged, and beneath it, tumbling down to the river, the narrow streets of Alfama were infused with an Arabic flavour that remains to this day.
Christians had maintained a precarious foothold in northern Portugal, and it was not until 1139, when Dom Afonso Henriques declared himself the first king of Portugal, that their struggle to gain power met with some success, defeating the Moors at the Battle of Ourique. However, Lisbon eluded his grasp for another eight years.
Inês and Pedro
Inês de Castro and Pedro the Just are two tragic figures who could have served as the models for Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Pedro, heir to the throne, defied his family and lived for a decade with the Spanish beauty, one of his queen's ladies-in-waiting. In 1355, three noblemen slit Inês's throat – a political assassination ordered by Prince Pedro's own father, Afonso IV. When he became king just two years later, Pedro exhumed her body, crowned it, and ordered all the nobles to kneel and kiss the skeleton's hand. Pedro and Inês are entombed together in the monastery at Alcobaça.
In 1147 the king recruited a volunteer force from thousands of Flemish, Norman, German and English crusaders on their way to the Holy Land, persuading them to strike a blow against the Moors in return for whatever booty Lisbon had to offer. The successful siege of Lisbon lasted four months. A century later the reconquest of Portugal was complete and Afonso III (1248–79) chose Lisbon as his capital.
The Golden Age
In a decisive battle, fought in 1385 at Aljubarrota (100km/62 miles north of Lisbon), João of Avis, recently proclaimed João I of Portugal, secured independence from Spain. A new alliance with England was sealed in the 1386 Treaty of Windsor, outlining true and eternal friendship. A year later King João married Philippa of Lancaster, the daughter of John of Gaunt. Their third surviving son, Henrique, Duke of Viseu, Master of the Order of Christ, became ‘Henry the Navigator’, who redrew the map of the world.
Prince Henry won his spurs in 1415 at the age of 21, when he sailed from Lisbon in a daring expedition to capture the North African stronghold of Ceuta. It was his first and last act of bravado, for he then retired to the ‘end of the world’, the Sagres peninsula in the Algarve, where he established a centre of research that gathered together astronomers, cartographers and other scientists whose work magnified the skills of mariners. Their expeditions redefined European understanding of the world. During Henry's lifetime, Portuguese caravels sailed far beyond the westernmost point of Africa. With the colonisation of the Atlantic islands of Madeira and the Azores, the foundations of the future Portuguese empire were swiftly laid.
The king who ruled over Portugal's Golden Age of Exploration – and exploitation – was Manuel I, ‘The Fortunate’, who reigned from 1495 to 1521. Discoveries made during this period made him one of Europe's richest rulers. During his reign the Tower of Belém and the impressive Jerónimos Monastery were built in the ‘Manueline’ architectural style that eased Portugal from the Gothic into the Renaissance. Whimsically flamboyant and decorative, it is rife with references to the sea.
Manueline style in the church at Jerónimos Monastery
Chris Coe
The most significant expedition under Manuel's flag was Vasco da Gama's sea voyage from Lisbon in the summer of 1497. Rounding what is now known as the Cape of Good Hope, Vasco da Gama found what Columbus had been looking for but missed – the sea route to the spices of the East. Reaching Calicut in southern India the following year, Portugal put an end to the Venetian monopoly of the Eastern spice trade by assuming control of the Indian Ocean and attracting merchants from all over Europe to Lisbon. Further territories were discovered in 1500, when the Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral reached Brazil.
Times of Trial
When Manuel died in 1521, he was succeeded by his son, João the Pious. With one eye on the ungodly ways of prosperous Lisbon and the other on the Inquisition in Spain, João invited the Jesuits to cross the border into Portugal.
Although the Inquisition in Portugal was never as powerful as it was in Spain, it relentlessly persecuted ‘New Christians’ – Jews who were all forced to embrace Christianity, including Spanish Jews who had been promised refuge in Portugal. Despite these witch hunts, an outbreak of plague and such natural calamities as earthquakes, by the end of the 16th century Lisbon had an estimated population of 100,000.
However, hard times followed and many left to find a better life in the new colonies. When Dom Henrique died leaving no heir in 1580, Philip II of Spain marched in and forced the union of the two crowns. It took 60 years for the local forces to organise a successful uprising against the occupation. On 1 December 1640 – celebrated as Portugal's Restoration Day – Spanish rule was finally overthrown, and the Duke of Bragança was crowned João IV in a joyful ceremony in Lisbon's huge riverfront square, the Terreiro do Paço, known as the Praça do Comércio today.
His grandson, João V, enjoyed a long and glittering reign, from 1706 to 1750. As money poured in from gold discovered in Brazil, the king squandered it on lavish monuments and buildings. His greatest extravagance was the palace and monastery at Mafra, 40km (25 miles) northwest of the capital.
Destruction and Rebuilding
The great divide between Portugal's early history and modern times falls around the middle of the 18th century when, on All Saints’ Day, 1 November 1755, as the crowds packed the churches to honour the dead, Lisbon was devastated by one of the worst earthquakes ever recorded. Churches crumbled, the waters of the Tagus heaved into a tidal wave and fires spread throughout the city. The triple disaster is estimated to have killed between 15,000 and 60,000. Reminders of the nightmare are still found across Lisbon; the most evocative is the shell of the Carmelite church in the Bairro Alto district behind the Elevador de Santa Justa, which has been open to the sky since the morning its roof fell in.
Routine problems of state were beyond the talents of the ineffectual José I (1750–77), who could not be expected to cope with the challenge of post-quake recovery. The task of rebuilding fell to the power behind the throne – a tough, ambitious and tyrannical minister, Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, later Count of Oeiras, but best remembered as the Marquês de Pombal. Taking advantage of the power vacuum once the earth had stopped shaking, he mobilised all of Portugal's resources for the clean-up. Survivors were fed and housed, corpses disposed of, ruins cleared and an ambitious project for a newly structured city laid out.
Azulejos
Azulejos, the hand-painted, glazed ceramic tiles omnipresent in Lisbon, are not merely decorative. After the Great Earthquake and fires devastated much of Lisbon and the surrounding area in the 18th century, these tiles were widely used to protect buildings from going up in flames again. The name azulejo is thought to be derived from al-zuleiq,Arabic for small polished stone. At the Museu Nacional do Azulejo you can see how they are made.
Today, the modern sections of the capital are aptly referred to as ‘Pombaline Lisbon’. Pombal's achievements are commemorated with his heroic statue, on top of a column at the north end of the Avenida da Liberdade in downtown Lisbon, a central road hub referred to as ‘Pombal’. A huge equestrian statue of José holds the main place of honour in the Praça do Comércio where the riverside royal palace had been before the earthquake. The king had a close brush with death in an assassination attempt in 1758, after which Pombal inaugurated a reign of terror, with widespread repression.
Tile panel at Miradouro de Santa Luzia, showing Lisbon's royal palace before the earthquake
Tony Halliday
The Peninsular War
At the beginning of the 19th century, Napoleon managed to drag Portugal into the heat of Europe's conflicts. The situation became so perilous that the royal family fled to Brazil on board British ships. Taking no chances, they remained there until 1821, 10 years after the crisis was over.
In 1807 Napoleon had tried to pressure Portugal into abandoning its traditional loyalty to England. Lisbon attempted to stay neutral, but when it refused to declare war on Britain, the French army under General Andoche Junot marched in, setting up headquarters in the Queluz Palace, just outside Lisbon.
Military miscalculations in the face of a British expedition sent Junot's army packing in 1808. Over the next few years, repeat engagements became notable victories for the combined Portuguese-British forces, who owed much to the strategic brilliance of the great British commander, Sir Arthur Wellesley (later the Duke of Wellington). After the textbook battle of the Lines of Torres Vedras, north of Lisbon, the French began a long retreat, sacking and looting as they went. Their last outpost in Portugal was evacuated in 1811.
Civil War
Peace was still to prove elusive, and 17 years later the country was again at war – this time pitting brother against brother. On the death of João VI, his eldest son, Pedro IV, who had become emperor of a newly independent Brazil, fought to wrest the crown of Portugal from his absolutist brother, Miguel I. Pedro won, though he died of consumption only months later, in September 1834, aged 36. His adolescent daughter, Maria da Glória, assumed the throne. She married the German nobleman Ferdinand of Saxe-CoburgGotha, who built for her the astonishing Pena Palace above Sintra and fathered her five sons and six daughters. Maria II died in childbirth at the age of 34.
Statue of Pedro IV in the Rossio
Tony Halliday
Premature and tragic deaths claimed many Portuguese royals, but in all the country's history only one king was assassinated. On 1 February 1908, as the royal family was riding in an open carriage past the Terreiro do Paço, an assassin's bullet felled Carlos I. A few seconds later another conspirator fatally shot Carlos's son and heir, Prince Luís Felipe. A third bullet hit the young prince Manuel in the arm. Thus wounded and haunted, Manuel II began a brief two-year reign as Portugal's last king. He was deposed on 5 October 1910 in a republican uprising supported by certain elements of the armed forces. The royal yacht spirited him to Gibraltar and later to England, where he lived in exile.
Republic to Dictatorship
The republican form of government was as unstable as it was unfamiliar. Resignations, coups and assassinations kept an unhappy merry-go-round of presidents and prime ministers whirling. The nation could ill afford a war, but German threats to its African territories pushed Portugal towards World War I on the side of the Allies. On 24 February 1916, the Portuguese navy seized a group of German ships anchored in the Tagus, and the Kaiser replied with the inevitable declaration of war. A Portuguese expeditionary force sailed for the trenches of France.
The war's toll hastened the end of Portugal's unsuccessful attempt at democracy. After a revolution in 1926, General António Óscar Carmona assumed control, and two years later entrusted the economy to António de Oliveira Salazar, then an economics professor at Coimbra University. The exhausted Portuguese finances rallied soon afterwards. In 1932 Salazar was named prime minister. His tough, authoritarian regime – the Estado Novo (New State) – favoured economic progress and nationalism. He kept Portugal neutral in World War II, but permitted the Allies to use the Azores as a base.
The Carnation Revolution
When Salazar suffered a stroke in 1968, power was handed to Dr Marcelo Caetano. However, in 1974 the armed forces, discontented by hopeless colonial wars, overthrew the dictatorship in the so-called Carnation Revolution. Portugal disengaged itself from Mozambique and Angola, and managed to absorb the million or so refugees who fled to a motherland most had never seen. The nation suffered several years of political confusion and great hardship before adjusting to democracy.
With entry into the European Union in 1986, development quickened, and Portugal soon had one of Europe's fastest-growing economies. As host of World Expo in 1998, Lisbon launched a gleaming new neighbourhood, Parque das Nações, east of the city. That year too saw the writer José Saramago win the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 2004 Portugal hosted the European Football Championship for which new stadiums were built, others renovated.
But the economy began to stagnate and the 2008 financial crisis left Portugal with a budget deficit that was fast spiralling out of control. In 2011, it became the third EU country after Greece and Ireland to ask for a financial bail-out from the EU.