Lisbon

About 2.8 million people live in the Lisbon Metro Area (which represents approximately 27% of the country’s population). It is continental Europe’s westernmost capital city and the only one along the Atlantic coast. While we only had a brief stay in this city, we visited the city again in November 2017 and October 2019.

The 25 de Abril Bridge is a suspension bridge connecting the city of Lisbon to the municipality of Almada on the left (south) bank of the Tagus River. It was inaugurated on August 6, 1966, and a train platform was added in 1999. Because it is a suspension bridge and has similar coloring, it is often compared to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, US. It was built by the American Bridge Company which constructed the San-Francisco-Oakland Bridge, but not the Golden Gate. ¨

Belem Tower or the Tower of St Vincent is a fortified tower located in the civil parish of Santa Maria de Belem. It is a UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITE because of the significant role it played in the Portuguese maritime discoveries of the era of the Age of Discoveries.

The tower was commissioned by King John II to be part of a defence system at the mouth of the Tagus River and a ceremonial gateway to Lisbon.

The tower was built in the early 16th century. It has incorrectly been stated that the tower was built in the middle of the Tagus and now sits near the shore because the river was redirected after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. In fact, the tower was built on a small island in the Tagus River near the Lisbon shore.

The Monument of the Discoveries was conceived in 1939 by Portuguese architect José Ângelo Cottinelli Telmo, and sculptor Leopoldo de Almeida, as a temporary beacon during thePortuguese World Exhibition opening in June 1940.

The Monument represented a romanticized idealization of the Portuguese exploration. It was originally constructed as a temporary construction, located in the Praça do Império as part of an urban renewal project favoured by minister Duarte Pacheco, but with the resistance of Cottinelli Telmo. Yet, by June 1943, the original structure was demolished after the exposition as there was no concrete formalization of the project.