Early history

The present Lisbon area is believed to have resided since Neanderthals, which became extinct with the spread of homo sapiens. The area has always been good for river settlements and for the protection of the Atlantic.

Throughout Neolithic times, there have been various agricultural societies before the actual city began to develop. Archaeological finds suggest that there has been permanent activity around today’s Lisbon since about 2,500 BC.

Origin of the city

The first habitation in what later became Lisbon is believed to have been established in the 12th century BC, with effects of Phoenician origins from the time around Lisbon Cathedral and the castle of Castelo de São Jorge found.

The presence of the Phoenicians was of commercial importance. They set up a trading post dealing with local tribes in the areas along the mouth of the Tagus River. They called the trading place of Alis Ubbo, and it was one of the Phoenician outposts seen by the Gadir administration.

Archaeologists believe that local tribes settled as urban settlements simultaneously with the Phoenician trading station, where goods such as metals and salted fish were exchanged.

The Roman Olisipo

After the Phoenicians, Carthage emerged as the ruling power in the Iberian Peninsula and the Tagus River. The Roman Empire was at the same time a kingdom in expansion, and after the Battle of Ilipa in 206 BC. started Rome’s conquest of Hispania, which the peninsula was named.

In 138 BC Consul Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus could incorporate the future Lisbon into the Roman Empire. Callaicus fortified the settlement, and the locals fought on the Roman side against, among other things, attacking cellars. As a thank you, the city was granted the status of the Municipium Cives Romanorum with associated rights, and the place was named Olisipo Felicitas Julia.

Olisipo Felicitas Julia gained local autonomy in the Roman province of Lusitania, whose main city was Emerita Augusta. The citizens of the city enjoyed privileges such as being Roman citizens with tax exemption. At that time, the population rose to about 30,000, and as in other Roman cities, city plans were laid out and foundations such as theaters and forums founded.

The Fall of Rome and the Germans

The time during Rome was a time of prosperity for the city, but the Roman Empire gradually weakened in the centuries following the birth of Christ.

There were periods of epidemics that thinned out the population, which were also marked by changing rulers after the Romans. Vandals and Alans occupied Olisipo in the early 400s before Visigoths plundered the city in 419 under King Walia.

The successor to the Roman Empire initially became the kingdom of the subees, which emerged in the Roman provinces of Lusitania and Gallaecia around the year 410. In the 440s, Olisipo became part of the empire, which survived until the latter half of the 500s, before being incorporated into the kingdom of the Visigoths. The Iberian Peninsula.

At this time, Olisipo was called Ulixbona, and for a time it remained a busy trading town for intermediaries between Greek, Syrian and Jewish merchants and local producers of goods.

Centuries of the Moors

From the 500s, Ulixbona’s trade and general development was destroyed by repeated attacks, looting and changing political regimes, reducing the city to a smaller village of no great importance.

There were also bad times in the Visigothic Empire, which was marked by civil wars, and this weakened the country. Under the leadership of Tariq ibn Ziyad, the Muslim Moors began their invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in 711. Ulixbona was captured by the Moors in 714 and then renamed al-Ushbūna.

The Moors developed al-Ushbūna to once again be a trading town. The traffic of goods went from the port across the sea to the Arab countries of North Africa and the Middle East, and the city grew to be one of the largest in Europe.

In the time of the Moors, al-Ushbūna developed into a typical Middle Eastern Arab city with city walls, a medina, a mosque and a fortress. In addition, the city grew larger and the Alfama district was built next to the city center.

Al-Ushbūna was several times besieged, looted and captured. This happened, among other things, in 796 and 844, when the Scandinavian Vikings for a time occupied the city, which they had to leave again after local matches. al-Ushbūna again became the target of attacks in 851, 966 and 1093. However, the Muslim ants retained power in the city, and this was done with alternating rulings from Moorish political centers in Andalusia. However, the Moorish rule was preceded by its decline in the 12th century.

Christian reconquista

The Christian loss of the Iberian Peninsula was something that several times led to the so-called reconquista, which was to recapture the peninsula and thereby also al-Ushbūna during a Christian kingdom.

In the first half of the 12th century, the Kingdom of Portugal emerged from several smaller areas; the country became independent in 1139 and it was a time when there were several battles to conquer al-Ushbona as well.

After several vain attempts to invade the city, Portuguese and Spanish troops along with crusaders attacked the Holy Land al-Ushbona in 1147, and after some fighting, the Muslims in al-Ushbona’s castle surrendered on October 22 of that year.

King Alfonso I of Portugal formally gained control of Lisbon on November 1, 1147, when a former mosque was inaugurated as a Christian cathedral. On that occasion, one of the British crusaders had been designated the city’s first bishop. Three years later, Alfonso tore down the city’s Great Mosque, which had previously served as a church, to give way to a newly built cathedral in Lisbon itself.

Lisbon in the Middle Ages

After the Lisbon conquest in 1147, Alfonso I sought to create new trade and growth in the city, and in 1179 he established a new large trading center to reopen old trade routes and establish new ones. Alfonso’s plans succeeded and trade with Cádiz and Seville flourished again. So did the overseas trade with Mediterranean cities such as Constantinople and with northern European cities that were not traded under the Moors for religious reasons.

Portuguese merchants opened with the increased trade offices in eg Bruges, Southampton and several cities in the later Hanseatic League. At the same time, people were trading on the Mediterranean, and the city’s Jews were trading with North Africa. In total, it provided a diversity of goods in and through Lisbon, whose activity and economy contributed to major urban development. The trade also meant that more yards saw the light of day.

The economy was good, and the military threat had been minimized following the Portuguese reintroduction of the Algarve by the Moors. In 1256 Alfonso III chose to move the court and thereby also the capital of the kingdom from Coimbra to Lisbon.

Lisbon was a new capital, and it also developed into one of the most international cities in Europe. Business people from Genoa, Venice and other bustling cities settled in Lisbon, and Portugal benefited from the new residents’ knowledge of finance and cartography, among other things.

The 13th century was a time when there was tension with the Spanish of Castile. There were several clashes, and Protugian provocations were reciprocated with Castile’s conquest of Lisbon in 1373. The Portuguese paid ransom and the Spaniards withdrew again. After this episode, Portugal strengthened Lisbon’s defense with city walls.

The positive economic development of the period was periodically restored partly by earthquakes. The first known earthquake destroyed part of the city in 1290, and earthquakes were again recorded in 1318,1321 and several other times. At the same time, Portugal was starved of famine in 1333 and plague in 1348, and a large part of the population died as a result.

Civil War in the country

King Ferdinand I died in 1383, leaving no male successors to the throne. New ruler became King João I of the Castile, which was not supported throughout the country. Large parts of the aristocracy in northern Portugal, for example, looked favorably at a union of the Spaniards, while the Lisbon grocery store feared losing privileges and lucrative trade routes to, for example, England.

In 1383, civil war broke out in Portugal, with the conservative medieval part on one side and Lisbon’s international trade class on the other. The merchants saw Castile’s feudal principles as limiting their opportunities. With the help of England, Lisbon won the former power bastion in Northern Portugal through victories in the nobility’s siege of the capital in 1384 and in the Battle of Aljubarrota in 1385.

The result of the civil war not only became a victory for the merchant stand, but it also led to a shift in power in the country. Portugal’s new aristocracy grew out of the merchants in Lisbon, who, after the Civil War, became the country’s real political center of power; a significant part of the power was formerly in the north of the traditional nobility.

The new bourgeoisie built prestigious mansions in Lisbon, where the country’s university also moved. Furthermore, political agreement helped to safeguard the interests of the merchants in foreign policy. Trade agreements were concluded with Florence, Genoa and Venice, and in 1415 Portugal conquered Ceuta on the North African coast. It strengthened the naval defense against pirates, and Cueta also provided access to gold and ivory from Africa, which were important commodities in the region.

The Great Discoveries

Lisbon’s considerable trade was threatened in the 14th century by the Ottoman Empire, which expanded its territory in North Africa. Some of the trade routes were stopped and the Portuguese sought alternatives, not least bypassing the Ottomans and increasingly using maritime transport.

Trade routes over the sea were established from Lisbon, and in 1469 King Alfonso V granted a trade monopoly on African routes to the merchant Fernão Gomes, who, conversely, undertook to explore ever further south on the West African coast.

Madeira and the Azores were also colonized during this period, and several commodities such as cane sugar and wine were pouring into Lisbon’s markets. There also came gold and ivory from Guinea and the Gold Coast, where Lisbon’s merchants traded heavily; they traded, among other things, with goods produced in Portugal.

However, the most lucrative and interesting market was India, and with the Turkish Ottomans’ blockade in the eastern Mediterranean, a new expedition was planned. It was Vasco da Gama’s departure from Lisbon in 1497. He sailed east and, with his arrival in Calcutta, found the sea route to India.

The great voyages of discovery continued, and soon after, Portugal possessed trading cities in India, Asia and Africa. Lisbon’s trade flourished on the basis of the exclusive right to spice trade, and large buildings such as Jerónimos Monastery in Belém were erected for the immense wealth of the city and the country.

The establishment of trading cities brought the Portuguese to China and Japan, but falling prices led to a poorer economy and thus the start of Lisbon’s fall as the dominant trading city. Other European colonial powers had also focused on increasing trade with new colonies.

The Golden Century

Art and science flourished side by side with the trade in Lisbon, and the 16th century became the golden age of the city. There were many scientists working in the Portuguese capital; among others Damião de Góis and Pedro Nunes.

It was a time of prosperity and everyone in the city enjoyed it. This also applied to Lisbon’s ordinary citizens, who maintained a livelihood that was not seen in many places in Europe.

Lisbon experienced an increase in population during this time. This was partly due to the fact that the Spanish king had expelled Jews from Spain in 1496 for the purpose of creating a pure Christian state. The Jews went to Lisbon in large numbers, who were aware of the positive economic impact the Jews had on the city’s development. In 1497, King Manuel I decreed that all Jews could stay if they converted to Christianity.

The new Christians continued their Jewish faith in hiding, and their status as a Christian led many former Jews to rise in the social ranks of Portuguese society. This fell to the old elite so much that it eventually ended in fighting and several killed new Christians in 1506. Manuel I was soon after forced to introduce the Inquisition in Portugal and the new Christians were limited in their opportunities in the country.

The inquisition was instrumental in destroying the positive development of the grocery trade. Power became increasingly conservative, and the new policy lowered the level of activity at the grocery store, which to some extent moved to England and the Netherlands. With the merchants, trade was increasingly transferred to other countries, and Portugal lost many connections to, for example, China and India.

The decline in trade was not the only accident that impressed in the latter half of the 16th century. In 1569, the plague raged again in Lisbon, killing an estimated 50,000 people. Just a few years later, in 1579, King Sebastian I died, and in the wake of that followed a succession battle that ended a union between Castile and Portugal with the Spanish King as Portugal’s King Felipe I.

Spanish kings

Spain’s conquest and occupation of Portugal was crowned with the formal accession of Felipe Is in 1581, and the Spanish time in the country lasted until 1640. Felipe I reigned until 1583, and he invested in Lisbon and Portugal, and he also considered doing so Portuguese capital to the capital of the Spanish empire.

The remaining time under Spain became a costly time for Lisbon, the city being disregarded by the development of favored Spanish cities. Portugal’s power status was also undermined by the removal of territories in the empire, such as parts of Brazil, and Lisbon was reduced to a provincial city without real power by the Catholic elite in Madrid.

In 1640, rising Portuguese rebellion succeeded in overcoming Spain, and the Duke of Braganza was inaugurated as Portugal’s new regent named João IV. With the regained independence, Lisbon could once again decide on developments. However, the following period was marked by economic decline, which among other things led many to go to the monastery, where the church took care of the necessities.

17th century gold and earthquake

The Portuguese economy was in need in the late 1600s, and therefore gold was found in Brazil in 1693. The state imposed a tax on the so-called royal fifth. Gold mining rose sharply in the 18th century and the tax became the most important source of income in the country.

Diamonds were also found in Brazil, and the gold flowed in great style to and through Lisbon, where opulent construction was an expression of prosperity. Others of the city and its citizens moved to Brazil, giving the country a European character.

The progress in Lisbon lasted until November 1, 1755, when one of the most powerful earthquakes recorded over time hit the city. About two-thirds of Lisbon were destroyed and many residents who had fled to the areas surrounding the River Tejo were drowned by the tsunami that followed the quake.

It is estimated that up to 60,000 of Lisbon’s 180,000 residents perished during the earthquake or subsequent floods and fires that ravaged the city for six days. Many solid buildings survived the quake, but most of the poorer people’s houses were destroyed. This also included several large public buildings, churches and so on.

Based on the destruction in 1755, the later awning of Pombal was given the task of rebuilding the city, and in a few decades it rose for the most part again; however, the entire reconstruction lasted until the early 19th century. The city center was relatively deserted after the earthquake of 1755, and Pombal perhaps used the world’s first major modern urban planning to construct the entire Baixa neighborhood, which was redone and rebuilt in a style far from the narrow streets and alleys of former times.

Some of Marquis de Pombal’s advisers had suggested moving the capital to another city, but Pombal dismissed that opportunity. There were funds in the country for the faster rebuilding, and the bill of about 20 million silver cruzados could be paid with revenue from Brazilian gold.

All buildings in Baixa were to be erected according to a new building regulations to protect against future earthquakes and fires. The main street Rua Augusta was constructed and it was the axis between the Rossia and Praça do Comércio squares in the new center.

The Marques de Pombal also did nothing but secure the reconstruction of Lisbon. He also conducted a showdown with the dominance of the church and the territorial power of the conservative nobility. In the 1770s, Pombal succeeded in securing the political influence of the grocery store, easing their taxes and other things that brought new growth and more business.

Pombal was forced to step down when Conservative Queen Maria I assumed the throne after José I. She reversed many of Pombal’s progressive reforms, and after an economic boom, Lisbon and Portugal stagnated, and it even came to economic setbacks.

Napoleonic era

After the independence of the United States and the French Revolution, there was political break-up in many places in Europe. In France, the aftermath of the revolution developed into Napoleonic rule and then several wars in which Portugal also became involved.

Portugal stood on the side of England from the beginning, and in 1807 France tried unsuccessfully to conquer the Portuguese navy and its ports. This prompted Napoleon to send troops led by General Junot against Portugal.

The late King João VI, who had been the real regent of Portugal since 1799, moved the court to Brazil the day before General Junot entered the Portuguese capital on November 30, 1807.

The French installed themselves in Lisbon, where Junot took up residence in the royal palace in Queluz. The daily headquarters were in the city center around Rossio Square, and liberal ideas with French inspiration were discussed. However, Junot chose not to carry on Pombal’s progressive ideas.

The French era did not last long in Lisbon. For various reasons, the Portuguese asked England for help, and the British came to Lisbon as early as 1808. They established headquarters in Arroios, and the English almost ruled the city and country as a British colony on behalf of the Portuguese regent who remained in Brazil.

French troops finally withdrew from Portugal in 1811. Fighting continued in the country, which with the Vienna Congress in 1815 became independent again; now just like the United Kingdom Portugal, Brazil and the Algarve / Reino Unido de Portugal, Brasil e Algarves.

The wars of the Napoleonic period, however, still gave way to reverberations. João VI became king in 1816, but the country remained under the leadership of the British and Marshal Beresford at the head. The liberation from the English began on August 24, 1820 in Porto, and the following year the Portuguese adopted a new constitution. João VI returned to Lisbon in 1821, and in 1822 Brazil declared independence with Pedro I as emperor.

19th Century Lisbon

The time after the new Portuguese independence was used to realize many new plans. In the decades, scheduled shipping by ship between Lisbon and Porto was established, a new city plan saw the light of day, just as new lighting was also invested. Railways were also included in the development plans early on, but conservative forces pulled out those plans, so Portugal’s first runway first opened between Lisbon and Carregado in 1856.

At the same time as the many new plants, the economy of Lisbon and Portugal was gradually deteriorating due to Brazilian independence. Brazil’s gold and many other commodities did not flow through Lisbon’s trading houses, so Portugal had to find alternative financing and trade to compensate for the loss.

Brazilian gold had made Lisbon rich since the end of the 16th century, and the city had become the fifth largest city in Europe. This was reversed, and the city maintained only a monopoly on trade with colonies such as Angola and Mozambique, while northern European cities had experienced significant increases in prosperity with industrialization and trade across the North Atlantic.

In Lisbon, however, the conservative elite made great fortunes, but poverty characterized other parts of society. In the 1870s, Fontes Pereira de Melo joined as prime minister, fighting for economic liberalism, industrialization and expansion of the country’s infrastructure.

A railway line was established between Lisbon and Porto, and electric light was introduced in 1878. Sewers were built and public houses were urged to paint houses in special colors using tiles on the facade. This call was to beautify Lisbon and distance it from an international reputation as a dirty city.