Lisbon perks up at night

The thing about the 1974 coup is that it could have been far bloodier. Civilians filled Largo do Carmo, where Prime Minister Marcello Caetano was barricaded inside the secret-police headquarters. Jittery cops fired into the square, killing four people. The crowd dispersed, but then returned when insurgent army officers rolled up with an armored personnel carrier. Photos from the time show people climbing the square's jacaranda trees to watch the standoff while others nonchalantly leaned against the armored vehicle. After nearly 50 years of being terrorized by their government, they would not be denied a front-row seat. Portugal's fascist regime had come to an end. Correction: Carmo Square is claimed by the bookish Chiado neighborhood, not Bairro Alto.

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Diary

Each morning begins with a stroll through Alfama, climbing to this vista or that. The people of Alfama are not blessed with good humor and do not naturally make eye contact with outsiders. They do seem grateful to be able to get up and do a day's work, or to greet their neighbors on their way to the corner store. Outside my tiny windows after midnight I can recognize some of their voices without peeking: The washroom attendant delivers a searing staccato of insults when she has been slighted, and the local madman howls for deliverance. When dogs need to be wrangled, the restaurant workers at Antu Alfama take up the mantle. But the conversations that stick with you ―the ones that escort you to dreamland ― are tender, muffled exchanges that seep almost transcendentally through the walls from unknown directions. These murmured confidences continue until about 5 a.m., followed by two hours of true silence before the wagtails and sparrows awake. What you never hear in Alfama, an ...

Europe's art racket

I just wanted to get in the door marked "Europe." Lisbon is great, but I'd be equally happy in Split or Bucharest or Lubeck, were the fare as reasonable. The blood and soil of a place, its creeds and ancient loyalties, are not intrinsically interesting. The castle on the hill behind me was really important to people trying to stay alive 800 years ago, but it's just a bilheteria and a turnstile today. Now, when a shady art collector like Calouste Gulbenkian wants to serve up his collection on any number of leopard-spotted, hyacinth-embossed platters ― this is when things get interesting. Bring it on. I am a porous visitor, here to soak up the continent. He was a strange dude. The day after the Earl of Carvanon died in 1923, Gulbenkian was on the phone trying to scoop up his collection of antiquities. A prominent art dealer reminded him the body was still warm. Gulbenkian was born to a family of wealthy Armenian kerosene merchants in Istanbul. Under the tutelage of a ...

A trip to prison

Of all the European dictators of the first half of the 20th century, only Francisco Franco of Spain held on to absolute power longer (39 years) than Portugal's Antonio Salazar (32 years). Stalin clocks in at 25 years, Mussolini at 21, Hitler a mere 12. What strikes me about Salazar's reign isn't its brutality ― that's a job requirement ― or even that it harnessed a vast propaganda machine that wrenched all the levers of society ― in the family, at school, at work and play. It's that he's the only one who did it while wearing a suit and tie. These are the things one thinks about lying in bed after a visit to the Aljube prison in Lisbon, which opened to the public as a museum in 2015. It was here that thousands were brought to be interrogated and tortured on the suspicion of opposing the big guy, whose bankrupt political philosophy manifested itself by spending 40 percent of the national budget on the armed forces while keeping his subjects poor and illiterate (p...

336 hours in Lisbon

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