Miradouro de Santa Catarina & the Adamastor
Why is it significant?
Spread out below this terrace are the cranes of the port, the red bridge leaping across the Tagus and, on the far bank, the statue of Christ with open arms. Behind you, emerging from a block of rough stone, looms a twisted, furious giant. Lisboetas often call this whole lookout simply the Adamastor.
Key Facts
| Place | Miradouro de Santa Catarina & the Adamastor |
|---|---|
| Address | Rua de Santa Catarina, 1200-401 Lisboa, Portugal |
| Geo Coordinates | 38.70950, -9.14770 |
| Part of Walk | Pessoa's Lisbon: Poets, Bookshops and Lookouts of Chiado & Bairro Alto |
| Generated | Generated |
Spread out below this terrace are the cranes of the port, the red bridge leaping across the Tagus and, on the far bank, the statue of Christ with open arms. Behind you, emerging from a block of rough stone, looms a twisted, furious giant. Lisboetas often call this whole lookout simply the Adamastor.
The giant comes straight out of the book we just met. In the fifth canto of The Lusiads, as Vasco da Gama's ships approach the southern tip of Africa, a storm cloud takes the shape of a monstrous figure. It is Adamastor, a Titan turned into the rocks of the Cape of Good Hope, and he threatens the sailors with shipwrecks, death and disaster for daring to cross into seas no European ship had sailed. Camões invented him to put the terror of the unknown ocean into one body.
The sculpture was made by Júlio Vaz Júnior and set up here in 1927. Notice how rough the block around him is left, as if the giant were still tearing himself out of the rock of the Cape. And see how the giant faces the river and the open sea, as if he were still waiting for the next ship to pass.
The bridge in front of you was opened in 1966 and named after the dictator, António de Oliveira Salazar. After the revolution of 25 April 1974 it was renamed Ponte 25 de Abril, the name it has carried ever since. From this one terrace you can read five centuries of Portuguese story-telling: the epic of discovery, the giant of fear, the regime that borrowed both, and the date that ended it.
Fernando Pessoa wrote his own reply to Camões, a book called Mensagem, Message, about the sea and a dream of empire turned inward. Now climb north into Bairro Alto by Rua do Marechal Saldanha and the lanes beyond. It is a steep five hundred metres, but the grid of narrow streets ahead was once the noisiest newsroom in Portugal.