Igreja de Santo António: Where Lisbon's Favourite Saint Was Born

Why is it significant?

Stand in the little square and face the church with the curved pediment and the single doorway, squeezed between the tram rails and the cathedral. It looks modest... almost polite. Yet ask anyone in Lisbon who their saint is, and this is the address they will give you.

Key Facts

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Stand in the little square and face the church with the curved pediment and the single doorway, squeezed between the tram rails and the cathedral. It looks modest... almost polite. Yet ask anyone in Lisbon who their saint is, and this is the address they will give you. Tradition says that around 1195 a boy called Fernando Martins de Bulhões was born in a house on this very spot, a stone's throw from the cathedral where he was baptised. He studied with the Augustinian canons, then left Portugal for good, joined the young Franciscan order and became a famous preacher in Italy. He died near Padua in 1231 and was made a saint less than a year later, one of the fastest canonisations in history. So the world calls him Anthony of Padua. Lisbon has never quite forgiven Padua for that. Go down into the crypt and you are shown a small room, venerated as the place of his birth. The church above it is not medieval at all. The earthquake of 1755 brought the old one down, and what you see was rebuilt afterwards to a design by Mateus Vicente de Oliveira, the architect who also worked on the royal palace at Queluz. And then there is June. On the night of the twelfth, Lisbon throws its biggest street party for Santo António. Alfama fills with smoke from grilled sardines, paper garlands hang between the balconies, and people give each other manjericos, little pots of basil with a paper carnation and a four-line love verse stuck in the soil. Anthony is the matchmaker saint, so the city also stages its famous Saint Anthony weddings, a tradition that began in 1958. Children used to set up tiny altars on the pavement and ask passers-by for a coin for the saint. Officially, Lisbon's patron is Saint Vincent, a martyr whose ravens you will meet later. In practice, Anthony won the city's heart a long time ago. Now leave the cathedral for the end of the walk, and go downhill towards the river, to a house covered in stone spikes.