Top of the Park: The Monument to 25 April 1974
Why is it significant?
Turn around at the top of the park and look back the way you came. The clipped lawns sweep down to Pombal on his column, the avenue runs dead straight to the Baixa, and beyond it all lies a strip of silver: the Tagus, with the hills of the south bank behind.
Key Facts
| Place | Top of the Park: The Monument to 25 April 1974 |
|---|---|
| Address | Alameda Cardeal Cerejeira, 1070 Lisboa, Portugal |
| Geo Coordinates | 38.73030, -9.15400 |
| Part of Walk | Up the Avenida da Liberdade: Lisbon's Grand Boulevard from Restauradores to Parque Eduardo VII |
| Generated | Generated |
Turn around at the top of the park and look back the way you came. The clipped lawns sweep down to Pombal on his column, the avenue runs dead straight to the Baixa, and beyond it all lies a strip of silver: the Tagus, with the hills of the south bank behind.
Near you rises the monument to 25 April 1974, a cluster of tall stone forms by the sculptor João Cutileiro, unveiled in 1997. It marks the day the Estado Novo fell. Portugal had lived for forty-eight years under dictatorship, most of them under António de Oliveira Salazar: censorship, a political police, prisons for opponents, and from 1961 colonial wars in Angola, Guinea and Mozambique that took young men away for years.
It was soldiers who ended it. A movement of young captains, worn out by an unwinnable war, planned a coup in secret. The signals were two songs on the radio: just before eleven at night on 24 April, E Depois do Adeus, and just after midnight, Grândola, Vila Morena, by Zeca Afonso, a singer the regime distrusted. Troops rolled into Lisbon before dawn, and by that evening the government had surrendered.
And then came the flowers. The story goes that Celeste Caeiro, a restaurant worker carrying carnations meant for customers, handed them to the soldiers, who pushed them into the barrels of their rifles. The image went around the world, and the day became the Carnation Revolution. Very few lives were lost. A year later Portugal held its first free elections, and its African colonies became independent.
Every 25 April, crowds carrying red carnations march down the avenue below you, from the roundabout to the Baixa, singing the same songs. Stand here for a moment and you can almost hear them. Then cross the road behind the monument into one last garden, with a lake and a rather unexpected bronze lady.