Largo do Intendente Pina Manique
Why is it significant?
You are standing in a broad, sunny square with café tables, a few trees and, on one side, a building completely covered in tiles, painted figures and garlands climbing up its walls. Twenty years ago many Lisboetas would have told you not to come here at all, especially after dark.
Key Facts
| Place | Largo do Intendente Pina Manique |
|---|---|
| Address | Largo do Intendente Pina Manique, 1100-285 Lisboa, Portugal |
| Geo Coordinates | 38.72080, -9.13490 |
| Part of Walk | Mouraria, Cradle of Fado: From Maria Severa to Amália in Lisbon |
| Generated | Generated |
You are standing in a broad, sunny square with café tables, a few trees and, on one side, a building completely covered in tiles, painted figures and garlands climbing up its walls. Twenty years ago many Lisboetas would have told you not to come here at all, especially after dark.
The square is named after Diogo Inácio de Pina Manique, the intendant general of police under Queen Maria I in the late eighteenth century. He was a hard man and an energetic one. He hunted down subversive books and freemasons, but he also brought oil street lamps to Lisbon and in 1780 founded the Casa Pia, a home and school for orphans that still exists. The police chief of order lent his name to the square that, for most of the twentieth century, was famous for exactly the opposite.
Now look closely at the tiled façade. It belonged to the Viúva Lamego tile factory, founded in the middle of the nineteenth century, and the owners turned their own building into an advertisement. Exotic figures, allegories of trade, ornament everywhere: a catalogue you could not throw away, because it was the wall.
By the late twentieth century the Intendente had become a place of drugs and street prostitution, and the city mostly looked away. Then in 2011 the mayor of Lisbon, António Costa, moved his own office into a building on this square, a deliberately loud gesture. Renovation followed, and the Intendente became the gateway to a neighbourhood people now come to look for.
And here is the link with our walk. Fado was born in exactly this kind of place: among sailors, tavern-keepers, prostitutes and the poor, in streets respectable Lisbon preferred not to see. The song of the city's margins later became its national voice. Walk south now along Rua do Benformoso, the long narrow street leaving the square towards Martim Moniz.