Travels in Portugal - The Best of Lisbon - Part II

Lisbon has not yet been discovered by American tourists, but there are so many things the city has to offer – culture, sightseeing, shopping – that there is something for everybody. You can visit royal palaces, museums with great collections of art and royal coaches, churches bursting with gold and paintings. If this is not your first visit to the city, and you’ve done all the standard sightseeing before, check out art galleries (for more information go to www.lisboarte.com).

Quick Tips:

You will also find it hard to go hungry, with plenty of restaurants and cafes and a myriad of Portuguese pastries available on every corner. There are grocery stores everywhere, with the largest – El Corte Ingles (www.elcorteingles.pt) – located in the city center with eight floors of anything that you may ever need, from camping supplies to vegetables to electronics and cosmetics. On the outskirts of most larger towns, you can find grocery stores like Lidl (a store very much like Aldi but with better selection), Champion, Intermarche, Alisuper, and others.

Best Way To Get Around:

The city buses and trams are operated by Carris and you can grab a pocket-size map of the main city routes in your hotel. You can also map your route at their website, www.carris.pt. The tickets can be bought onboard in the yellow machine (1.10 euros), or in pairs at tobacconist (1 euro each). There are also 1-day and 3-day tickets that you need to validate in the yellow machine on your first journey. There is also a 1-day Carris-metro ticket that is valid on buses, trams and metro, and also a tourist pass good for 4 or 7 consecutive days on buses, trams and elevators. If you can’t find the route on the map, concierges in the hotels have a complete directory of all the bus and tram routes with all the stops and they can recommend you which bus has the closest stop to where you are and the shortest way to get where you are going. Buses in Portuguese are called autocarros, trains are called comboios.

Phone: 21 882 44 00
Open: Tues-Fri 9am-6pm, Sat 9am-7pm, Sun 9am-12:30pm and 3pm-5pm
Monastery entrance costs 4 euros for adults, 2 euros for students under 25 years of age

Imposing white stone façade with two tall bell towers can be seen from pretty much anywhere in the old part of the city especially from the walls of Castelo de Sao Jorge. The church has a very beautiful altar with two gilded columns supporting a large baldacchino with statues of goddesses on top and sides. Behind is baroque gilded organ on beautifully carved balcony. On each side of the altar there is a chapel with painted baroque columns with gilded floral motifs and rays of sun and angels at the top. Christ and Mary are facing each other inside the chapels. Tall cupola above the altar with royal coat of arms in the center is a sight. Santissimo Sacramento chapel, located on the left hand side near the altar, has "Last Supper" painting with finely carved gold fabric draping around the painting in the middle and angels out of plaster on the sides of it looking at you, beautiful iron gates with intricate ironwork lead into that chapel. All the remaining chapels are not lit, however they very much remind of the Santissimo Sacramento chapel.

Entrance to the monastery is to the right of the church. There are two floors with large ceiling frescoes and a beautiful colonnade of polychrome marble inlay and banister of Brazilian wood in one of the rooms. There is an exposition of 16th-century Flemish paintings. The cloisters of the monastery have rather plain white walls laid out with blue and white azulejos as are the staircases. They show everyday life of nobles. However the most important ones are azulejos of 38 La Fontaine’s fables on exposition along with the fables text in several languages. They are very witty and extremely interesting to read.

There is also the Pantheon of the house of Braganca with tombs of the Portuguese monarchs including the tomb of king Manuel II –- the last king of Portugal who died in exile -- and a tomb of Carlos I with a striking marble figure of grieving woman (the king was assassinated).

Phone: 21 782 37 45

The foundation Calouste Gulbenkian (pronounced in Portuguese as [Kalush’te Gul’benkyan] takes up a large building of modern construction with lots of light and open space that is adjacent to Museu Gulbenkian. Calouste Gulbenkian was a wealthy oil magnate who left a large art collection and a charitable trust to the foundation that has a lot of cultural events year round. The building has several installations of modern art. Large bathrooms with no lines even in the lady’s room are worth mentioning. Each floor has large windows, which face a well-maintained park with a rosarium. The Grand Auditorium, where concerts take place, has mahogany paneling on the walls (easily dating it as built in 1960s when wooden paneling was popular) with yellow/orange velvet rows of chairs, good modern acoustics and a stage that can be made smaller or larger by moving a large light wood screen. We had tickets for the balcony (10 euros each, reserved through the hotel concierge), however the usher told us that the hall wasn’t going to be full, so we could seat on the main floor. The floor is lined with cushy carpet of khaki color.

We were there for the concert of baroque music – selections from Beethoven – concerts for piano and cello – in two parts with intermission. It was a beautiful concert with music flowing through the concert hall and lifting up. The pianist was a real delight – a true virtuoso. They had two encores and performed also a piece by Chopin and by Brahms for the encores. When during the intermission I went to check if I could get tickets for the performance of Mozart opera that same week, the tickets were sold out. If during your visit to Lisbon, they have a performance scheduled, make an effort to go – you will really enjoy it.

Phone: 21 885 48 20
Open: Tues-Sun 10am–5pm, closed on Mondays and public holidays
Prices: 2 euros for adults, 1 euro for students under 25 years of age

Santa Engracia is a national Pantheon and is very much reminiscent of Rome Pantheon interior with each chapel carrying a cenotaph of the most distinguished men in Portuguese history -– Henry the Navigator, Luis Camoes (a poet who earned the recognition after his death), Vasco da Gama, Pedro Alvares Cabral (the man who discovered Brasil), Afonso Albuquerque, Nuno Alvares Pereira. The cupola of white and pink marble and three half-cupolas formed by semi-circles are covered with rosettes which are repeated in the design of the marble floor. To the sides are entrances to several more chapels where you can see cenotaphs of Almeida Garrett (a writer), Amalia Rodrigues (a famous fado singer) and several military men. This is the largest baroque structure in Lisbon and it took almost 300 years to build it.

You can also take an elevator up five floors and a short flight of steps to the top of the cupola to get a panoramic view of the city and look at the floor designs and the cupola in more detail.

Phone: 21 3620034/38
Open: Tues-Sun Oct-Apr 10am–5pm, May-Sept 10am–6:30pm
Closed on Mondays
Visit to the monastery costs 3 euros – adults, 1.5 euros – 15-25 years

The monastery occupies a huge block in the center of Belem, and it can be seen from afar. It is a very large 16th century white stone Manueline construction with lots of spires, spiral plasterwork around the large windows and entrance with elaborate artwork of statues. The monastery used to belong to Augustinian monks until all the monasteries in Portugal were closed in mid-19th century.

You start the visit with the church with very tall ceilings covered with Manueline designs full of knots and rope-like designs, as are columns and window frames. Columns are truly amazing because each is covered in floral designs typical of the Manueline style. The walls are bare with stained glass windows surrounded by Manueline plasterwork. Chapels of North and South transepts have tombs of princesses carried by the elephants and around the altar there are tombs of several kings and queens including king Manuel I. The altar with paintings above the silver shrine is surrounded by the chapels covered in baroque gilded columns and statues inside each. The ceiling above the altar is covered with crosses and coats of arms. The stone work is what amazes you the most – the myriad of various designs on the columns and around the chapels is a true testament to human creativity.

When you go up to the second floor, you see the choir, which suffered the most in the earthquake of 1755 and was rebuilt in 1883. The dark wood choir stalls have wonderful carvings, and above them there are paintings of saints including St. Jerome.

Monastery has an amazing courtyard and cloisters which are impossible to describe to give them the full credit – arches on top of arches with column designs with floral and human designs – is to say nothing. Each 3 columns supporting an arch are unlike the next. The cloisters form a rectangular courtyard and on one corner you can see a beautiful lion fountain. All of the carving is a wonderful example of Manueline style, and the cloisters, to my mind, is the single most impressive and beautiful piece of Portuguese architecture and craftsmanship. This alone may be the reason to visit Portugal.

Phone: 21 782 32 45
Open: Tues 2 pm – 6 pm, Wed-Sun 10 am – 6 pm, closed on Mondays and public holidays
Prices: 3 euros – adults, free entrance for students
www.gulbenkian.pt
Pictures without flash are allowed

This art collection is truly a gem and is considered one of the best in Europe. You start with Greco-Roman statues, then there is a large collection of gorgeous Persian carpets, ceramics and tiles, Turkish velvet covers and Chinese porcelain. The collection of European art starts with illuminated manuscripts, followed by Flemish tapestries and several porcelain Madonnas by della Robbia. A beautiful collection of European furniture mainly from the 18th century (in the style of Louis XV and XVI) includes Boulle calendar clock, bookcases and medal cabinets by Cressent. The collection of European paintings spans 5 centuries starting with 14th century triptychs and miniatures and through the beginning of the 20th century. There are well-displayed paintings by Weyden, Ghirlandaio, Carpaccio, Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, La Tour, Gainesborough, Fragonard, Guardi, Renoir, Degas, Manet, Monet and Cezanne. And of course there are breathtaking statues of Houdon’s Diana, Rodin’s Blessings and Carpeaux’s amazing Flora with white marble flowers looking so lifelike. But to me the most wonderful part was Gulbenkian’s collection of Lalique creations. Rene Lalique was a personal friend of Gulbenkian. The ultimate symbol of Art Nouveau – Lalique’s "Dragonfly" – which is on the cover of a lot of books on Art Nouveau - is here on display and draws everybody to itself like a magnet. You can see amazing brooches, necklaces, vases, combs and pendants with serpents or female faces or female figures or animal miniatures made out of semi-precious stones and surrounded by god leaf and diamonds. The Lalique collection is exquisite, you can spend hours in front of each item studying its details and still uncover something you didn’t notice before.