Praça do Comércio: Where the Royal Palace Fell
Why is it significant?
Stand in this vast square with the river at your back, the bronze king on horseback in the middle, and yellow arcaded buildings wrapping around you on three sides. It is so orderly, so calm... and every line of it was drawn because of a catastrophe.
Key Facts
| Place | Praça do Comércio: Where the Royal Palace Fell |
|---|---|
| Address | Praça do Comércio, 1100-148 Lisboa, Portugal |
| Geo Coordinates | 38.70730, -9.13640 |
| Part of Walk | After the Earthquake: The Baixa Pombalina and the Lisbon of 1755 |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand in this vast square with the river at your back, the bronze king on horseback in the middle, and yellow arcaded buildings wrapping around you on three sides. It is so orderly, so calm... and every line of it was drawn because of a catastrophe.
Before 1755 this was the Terreiro do Paço, the Palace Yard. King Manuel the First had moved the royal residence down here in the early 1500s, and the Ribeira Palace grew into one of the grandest in Europe, with a royal library of tens of thousands of books, archives of the voyages, paintings by great masters, and a brand-new opera house opened only months before the end. On the morning of 1 November 1755, All Saints' Day, with the churches full, the ground began to shake.
The shaking came in waves over several minutes, and churches, palaces and houses came down across the city. Many survivors ran to the open quay here, away from falling walls. Then the river drew back, and not long after, the sea came in. Fires started by candles and kitchen stoves burned for days. Tens of thousands of people died in Lisbon. The palace, the library and the opera were gone.
The king, José the First, was out at Belém with his family and survived. Afterwards, it is said, he could never again bear to sleep under a stone roof. The man who took charge was his minister Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, later the Marquis of Pombal. He sent a questionnaire to every parish: how long did the shaking last, what happened to the wells, how did the sea behave? Those answers are often called one of the first scientific studies of an earthquake.
The bronze rider is José the First, cast by the sculptor Machado de Castro and unveiled in 1775, and the square was renamed for commerce rather than for kings. In this same square, in 1908, King Carlos and his heir were shot dead in their carriage, a blow from which the monarchy never recovered. Now walk east along the arcades and down Rua da Alfândega to a church doorway that somehow survived the end of the world.