Lisboa - 2

The first photo is, obviously, a closer look at the Santa Justa elevator to give a better sense of some of the detail that is built into this very unusual structure. The height is apparently about 32 meters above the street of the Baixa, enough to give a fantastic view of the river and the old part of the city.

Remember to click on any photo for a slightly larger view.

This photo, taken from the top of the Santa Justa elevator, shows part of the Rio Tejo, the lower city and, in the upper left of the photo, a small part of the Alfama, the old Arab area of the city, which was part of Lisboa that was most spared by the earthquake of 1755. More about the Alfama later but to see photos of the Alfama from last year, click Here.

This photo, also taken from the top of the elevator, looks east - at the bottom is the Baixa, the lower part of the old city, and at the top of the photo is the Castelo São João which is, as I think you can appreciate, high up overlooking the city. I have some photos from the castle in the blog from last year.

This one looks east and a bit further north to newer parts of the city. The area in the lower part of the photo surrounded by buildings, is the Praça da Figueira (the Plaza of the Fig tree) and if you look closely in the center of this photo you can see our hotel, the Hotel Mundial, the building with greenish top where there is construction.

This photo looks south to the Rio Tejo, an extremely wide river and ideal harbour. The top of the arch at the end of Rua Augusta is visible in the middle left. All of the buildings in this photo are in the lower part of the city, the Baixa.

Another look from atop the Santa Justa elevator - this one looking down on the Praça dom Pedro IV. This Praça, known as Rossio (Rossio means a large open area), is the one with the beautiful walking surface with the somewhat unsettling undulating appearance, which you can see (click on the photo) if you look closely - or check out the photo below.

Here is a night scene on Rossio which shows the undulating appearance - I have shown photos of this in previous posts last year - to see last year's photos click Here. This surface is made up of thousands of 2 to 3 inch cubes of rock put in place by hand, one at a time.

Remember the Praça Comércio that I mentioned earlier, the one beyond the triumphal arch at the end of Rua Augusta? Well, this is it - and to the left is the triumphal arch (which apparently took 118 years to complete) at the end of the Rua Augusta. The 17th century buildings around the Praça are mainly government ministry buildings of one kind or another and in the middle is Lisboa's first equestrian statue representing José 1.

The photo on the right is of one of the colonnades which run along the buildings around the Praça - on the sides that look out onto the Praça.