Rua do Século
Why is it significant?
Rua do Século runs uphill in front of you, quieter than Bairro Alto, lined with old palaces whose stone doorways are wider than the street seems to need. The name means the Street of the Century, but it is not a boast about time. It is the title of a newspaper.
Key Facts
| Place | Rua do Século |
|---|---|
| Address | Rua do Século, 1200-433 Lisboa, Portugal |
| Geo Coordinates | 38.71220, -9.14770 |
| Part of Walk | Pessoa's Lisbon: Poets, Bookshops and Lookouts of Chiado & Bairro Alto |
| Generated | Generated |
Rua do Século runs uphill in front of you, quieter than Bairro Alto, lined with old palaces whose stone doorways are wider than the street seems to need. The name means the Street of the Century, but it is not a boast about time. It is the title of a newspaper.
O Século was founded in 1880 and grew into one of the biggest dailies in Portugal, with its headquarters on this street. For decades the Diário de Notícias and O Século were the two great rivals of Lisbon journalism, a few minutes' walk apart, competing for the same scoops and the same readers. O Século also published popular magazines and, under the Estado Novo, worked like every other paper under the blue pencil of the censors. It closed in 1977, in the turbulent years after the revolution.
But this street had a famous resident long before any newspaper. In 1699, in a family palace here, Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo was born. You know him as the Marquis of Pombal, the minister who ruled Portugal in the name of King José I after the 1755 earthquake and rebuilt the Baixa as a grid of straight, earthquake-resistant streets.
Pombal matters to this walk for another reason. In 1768 he created the Real Mesa Censória, a royal board of censorship that took control of books away from the Inquisition and gave it to the state. Some forbidden Enlightenment titles were tolerated, and many others were banned or burned. So the boy born on this street grew up to decide what Lisbon was allowed to read... and two centuries later his street gave its name to a newspaper that had to submit its proofs to censors of a different regime.
Censorship in Portugal ended only with 25 April 1974. Now follow Rua do Século north, uphill, about half a kilometre, until it opens into a leafy square with a giant cedar.