Jardim Botto Machado: A Short History of the Azulejo
Why is it significant?
Find a bench at the edge of the little garden and look out: below you, the railway terminus of Santa Apolónia, cranes and warehouses, and the wide, silver Tagus with the hills of the south bank beyond.
Key Facts
| Place | Jardim Botto Machado: A Short History of the Azulejo |
|---|---|
| Address | Jardim Botto Machado, Campo de Santa Clara, 1100 Lisboa, Portugal |
| Geo Coordinates | 38.71590, -9.12410 |
| Part of Walk | Lisbon in Blue and White: Graça, São Vicente & the Azulejo Trail |
| Generated | Generated |
Find a bench at the edge of the little garden and look out: below you, the railway terminus of Santa Apolónia, cranes and warehouses, and the wide, silver Tagus with the hills of the south bank beyond. Ships brought clay, cobalt and ideas up this river for centuries, so this is a good place to tell the story of the azulejo.
The first tiles in Portugal came from Seville, around 1500, geometric patterns in green, blue and honey, still very Moorish in feeling. King Manuel I saw them in Andalusia and covered rooms of his palace at Sintra with them. Then, in the sixteenth century, Italian and Flemish potters taught a new trick: painting directly on a white glaze, which meant tiles could carry pictures, not just patterns.
By the end of the seventeenth century Lisbon fell in love with blue and white, partly from the craze for Chinese porcelain and Dutch tiles. Around 1700, a generation of Portuguese painters, the so-called masters, created huge narrative panels for churches and palaces, whole walls telling stories, exactly what you saw at São Vicente and the Graça church.
Then came the earthquake of 1755. Lisbon had to be rebuilt fast and cheaply, and tiles with simple repeating patterns, made in workshops like the Royal Factory at Rato, from 1767, were used to line the new buildings. In the nineteenth century, people coming back from Brazil, where tiles kept houses cool, popularised them on outside façades. That is when Lisbon's streets started to shimmer.
So the shiny wall you passed this morning without a second look may be a direct descendant of a sultan's palace. Now leave the garden heading east, down towards the river and up again onto the next hill, the Barbadinhos. It is a steep five to ten minutes, and at the top you will find a temple built for machines.