Lisbon with Pats

01/06/2026

30/05/2026

Perspectives of Lisbon. Enjoy your weekend!

27/05/2026

👉 A Global (Food) Discovery Journey Through Tiles

This fantastic and large scale glazed tiles (450 thousand!) decoration by artist Françoise Schein in a central metro station in Lisbon depicts themes like the Portuguese Expansion, Portugal’s Age of Discovery and the beginning of a New Unknown World. In the space, we find maps and routes that the Portuguese followed in their epic journey beyond their borders, through Western and Eastern Africa and many other remote geographies and cultures in Asia and South America.

On the coast of India, and also in other Asian regions such as Arabia, Persia, China, or Japan, the Portuguese found a whole range of new social, cultural, food and religious practices, previously unknown to Europeans. The first accounts written by Portuguese travelers who came into contact with the Eastern world in the first decades of the 16th century were full of information about these new worlds, previously unknown or little known.

East of the Cape of Good Hope, the Portuguese encountered a new food world, with a wide array of foods and drinks, as well as dietary practices.

A very visible aspect, with respect to the diet of the Eastern peoples contacted by the Portuguese, was certainly the widespread use of a variety of spices, which, moreover, had been the great incentive for Portuguese attempts to reach India by a direct sea route in 1498. Products such as pepper, abundant especially in Malabar Coast, cinnamon, acquired on the island of Ceylon, cloves and mace, originating from the archipelagos of Maluku and Banda, or ginger, which existed in various Eastern regions, were used to season food and were present throughout maritime Asia, being the object of an intense worldwide trade. The poet and chronicler Garcia de Resende observed the following regarding India: There is in it all the abundance / of nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, / walnuts, ginger in abundance, and pepper in abundance, which fills the world with it”.

This metro station certainly depicts a new world of cultures, ingredients and cuisines!

24/05/2026

Françoise Schein, Belgian artist, talks about glazed tiles and specifically how they fit in architectural projects. A must-see!

Françoise Schein

22/05/2026

👉 Head of Bronze, Heart of Stone.

“He made himself feared, not loved”, wrote writer and politician Guerra Junqueiro in 1915 about of the most controversial and also admired characters of Portugal’s history.

This square and statue pays tribute to the statesman Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo (1699-1782), known as the Marquis of Pombal, who led Portugal to the era of the Enlightenment, having ruled between 1750-77.

It represents the great statesman on his pedestal of glory, contemplating his formidable work - the reconstruction of the city of Lisbon after the big earthquake of 1755. He laid the foundations of a modern society through Enlightenment and Rationalism, often with a very firm hand. Logically, that made him many fans as well as enemies.

Since 1934, the Marquis of Pombal has looked out over the city he rebuilt after the earthquake and that he so much admired.