Rossio: The Inquisition's Square and the Wavy Pavement
Why is it significant?
Look down first. The black and white stones under your feet ripple in long waves from one end of the square to the other, so that on a hot day you feel slightly seasick crossing it.
Key Facts
| Place | Rossio: The Inquisition's Square and the Wavy Pavement |
|---|---|
| Address | Praça Dom Pedro IV, 1100 Lisboa, Portugal |
| Geo Coordinates | 38.71400, -9.13940 |
| Part of Walk | After the Earthquake: The Baixa Pombalina and the Lisbon of 1755 |
| Generated | Generated |
Look down first. The black and white stones under your feet ripple in long waves from one end of the square to the other, so that on a hot day you feel slightly seasick crossing it. Then look up, past the two bronze fountains and the tall column, to the pale neoclassical theatre closing the north side.
This is the Rossio, officially Praça Dom Pedro the Fourth, and for centuries it was the true centre of Lisbon, the place of markets, bullfights, celebrations and executions. The wavy pavement is called Mar Largo, the wide sea. It was laid in the 1840s, and the story goes that much of the work was done by prisoners. It became the model for the black and white calçada portuguesa you now see all over the Portuguese-speaking world.
Now the theatre. The Teatro Nacional Dona Maria the Second opened in 1846 on the site of the Palácio dos Estaus, a fifteenth-century palace built to lodge foreign dignitaries. From the sixteenth century, that palace became the headquarters of the Inquisition in Lisbon. In this square, autos-da-fé were staged before crowds: the condemned were paraded, sentences were read, and some were handed over to be burned. A theatre now stands where the tribunal sat, which is one way for a city to answer its past.
The Inquisition's palace survived 1755 only to burn in 1836, which made room for the theatre. And the theatre itself burned in 1964, its interior gutted, and reopened only in 1978. Look at the statue on top of the pediment: Gil Vicente, the court poet counted as the father of Portuguese theatre.
The man on the column is King Pedro the Fourth, who was also the first emperor of Brazil. A stubborn rumour claims the statue was really made for the emperor Maximilian of Mexico and bought second-hand after he was shot... a story historians have firmly rejected, but Lisbon keeps telling it anyway. Now walk south down Rua Augusta, the broad pedestrian street, and stop about halfway down, where Rua da Vitória crosses it.