Largo do Rato & Its Aqueduct Fountain
Why is it significant?
Let the traffic swirl past you for a moment and find the stone fountain standing calmly on the edge of the square, a baroque niche with a basin, a little pediment and no hurry at all. Cars, buses and scooters pour through Largo do Rato in every direction. The fountain has seen worse.
Key Facts
| Place | Largo do Rato & Its Aqueduct Fountain |
|---|---|
| Address | Largo do Rato, 1250-185 Lisboa, Portugal |
| Geo Coordinates | 38.71990, -9.15410 |
| Part of Walk | Lisbon's Garden Hills: Aqueduct Water, Giant Trees & the Estrela Basilica |
| Generated | Generated |
Let the traffic swirl past you for a moment and find the stone fountain standing calmly on the edge of the square, a baroque niche with a basin, a little pediment and no hurry at all. Cars, buses and scooters pour through Largo do Rato in every direction. The fountain has seen worse.
This is the Chafariz do Rato, built in the 1750s and fed directly by the aqueduct gallery you just followed downhill. Its design is attributed to Carlos Mardel, the same architect as the Mãe d'Água. For the people of eighteenth-century Lisbon, fountains like this one were the whole point of the aqueduct. There was no water in the houses. The water lived here, in public, and you went to it.
Picture the scene around 1800. A queue of women with jars, servants from the big houses, and above all the aguadeiros, the professional water carriers. Many of them were Galicians from the north of Spain, who carried small barrels on their shoulders up Lisbon's staircases and sold water by the load. They were licensed, wore numbered badges, and were called out to fight fires, because they were the only ones with water at hand.
Water was power, too. Who got a pipe to their palace or convent, and who had to queue, was decided by the Crown. Around this square stood a convent of nuns and, just to the east, the Royal Silk Factory, founded in the 1730s and reorganised under the Marquis of Pombal after 1755... industry, faith and thirst, all drinking from the same channel.
The water still runs through the old galleries under your feet, a hidden river of stone that crosses the neighbourhood. From here, take Rua da Escola Politécnica, the street heading east along the ridge, for about five minutes. Behind a long wall on your right, a jungle is waiting.