Avenida da Liberdade: From Passeio Público to Boulevard
Why is it significant?
Walk up into the shade of the plane trees on Avenida da Liberdade and stop beside the stone monument with a bronze soldier on the central promenade. Look ahead along the boulevard: lanes of traffic split by garden strips, black-and-white stone pavements, ponds and statues rising from the green.
Key Facts
| Place | Avenida da Liberdade: From Passeio Público to Boulevard |
|---|---|
| Address | Avenida da Liberdade, 1250-146 Lisboa, Portugal |
| Geo Coordinates | 38.71950, -9.14530 |
| Part of Walk | Up the Avenida da Liberdade: Lisbon's Grand Boulevard from Restauradores to Parque Eduardo VII |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk up into the shade of the plane trees on Avenida da Liberdade and stop beside the stone monument with a bronze soldier on the central promenade. Look ahead along the boulevard: lanes of traffic split by garden strips, black-and-white stone pavements, ponds and statues rising from the green.
Before the avenue there was a garden. After the earthquake, in 1764, the city laid out the Passeio Público here, a walled promenade where Lisbon society came to stroll, to be seen, and to judge one another's clothes. At first it was a stiff, rather empty place; later it filled with music, gas lamps and fireworks on summer nights. But it was small and closed in, and Lisbon had started to dream of Paris.
So in 1879 the railings came down and the city began to cut a boulevard in the Parisian manner, about ninety metres wide and well over a kilometre long, all the way north up the valley. Many Lisboetas mourned their garden and attacked the cost. But the avenue opened the city northward, and everything modern Lisbon became, its new districts, its offices, its broad streets, grew from this one straight line.
The monument in front of you, unveiled in 1931, honours the Portuguese dead of the First World War. Portugal sent tens of thousands of men to the trenches of Flanders, poorly equipped and badly supported from home. On 9 April 1918, at the Battle of La Lys, a German offensive smashed into the Portuguese lines, and within hours thousands were killed, wounded or taken prisoner. It remains one of the darkest days in the country's military history.
Now look down at your feet. This is calçada portuguesa, small cubes of white limestone and black basalt laid by hand into waves, stars and patterns. The pavers still work the old way, kneeling, tapping each stone into a bed of sand with a hammer. Follow the patterns up the avenue to where two great cinemas face each other across the traffic.