Page 75 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Portugal

The wide Rua Augusta cutting through Lisbon’s Baixa district

BAIXA AND AVENIDA

It was the Baixa that felt the full force of the
1755 earthquake, which destroyed much of the
neighbourhood. From its ruins, the Marquês de
Pombal created an entirely new centre, using a
grid layout of streets and linking the riverfront
Praça do Comércio with the busy Rossio square.
The streets were flanked by uniform, Neo-Classical
buildings and named according to the shopkeepers
and craftsmen who traded there – Rua do Ouro
was the goldsmiths’ street, and Rua dos Sapateiros
that of the shoemakers.
Some 80 years later, the Arco da Rua Augusta
was built to celebrate the Baixa’s reconstruction.
The Avenida de Liberdade followed shortly
afterwards, laid out in 1882 as the city’s main
avenue between the Baixa and Parque Eduardo VII.
Fashioned on Paris’s Champs-Élysées, it is still the
city’s most upmarket area, lined with grand 19th-
century mansions and a tree-dotted central strip.
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