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LISBON Lisbon is a white city located on Portugal’s Tejo River. It is flamboyantly beautiful, full of melancholy but is also lively and bursting with colorful joie de vivre. The Praca de Pedro is more commonly known as the Rossio Square. At the northern end of the square is a former palace that has been transformed into a national theatre. The main square was once the setting of bull fights and up until 1820 and the Spanish Inquisition, so called heretics were burned at the stake. The medieval Sé Patriarcal Cathedral stands defiantly on a hillside. Following the Christian conquest, the city’s bishops church was built on the foundations of a former mosque to commemorate victory over the Moors. On the city’s highest hill is the marvelous Castle de Sao Jorge. Since times immemorial, this fortified complex has stood guard above the mouth of the Tejo. Little remains of the former Moorish royal residence in which Vasco Da Gama´s journey to India was once celebrated. Electricos is the name of Lisbon’s unique trams that travel noisily through the old town. They are an indelible feature of the city and negotiate the city’s twisting alleys like an ancient roller-coaster within streets so narrow that pedestrians are forced to seek refuge in the nearest doorway. On the banks of the Tejo, on the outskirts of the Belem district, is the Mosteiro dos Jeronimos. This superb historical building, with its snow-white façade, adornments and figures in playful Manuelistic style, dominates the entire city. Lisbon continues to be Portugal’s unchanged treasure right up to the present day.
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2009 DVD Releases
Africa
