page_title: History of Lisbon
section_title: Earthquake of 1755 and Pombaline era
hierarchical_section_title: History of Lisbon / Earthquake of 1755 and Pombaline era
caption_attribution_description: Português: Igreja de Santo António, Lisboa, Portugal.
context_page_description: The history of Lisbon, the capital city of Portugal, revolves around its strategic geographical position at the mouth of the Tagus, the longest river in the Iberian Peninsula. Its spacious and sheltered natural harbour made the city historically an important seaport for trade between the Mediterranean Sea and northern Europe. Lisbon has long enjoyed the commercial advantages of its proximity to southern and extreme western Europe, as well as to sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas, and today its waterfront is lined with miles of docks, wharfs, and drydock facilities that accommodate the largest oil tankers.
  During the Neolithic period, pre-Celtic peoples inhabited the region; remains of their stone monuments still exist today in the periphery of the city. Lisbon is one of the oldest cities in western Europe, with a history that stretches back to its original settlement by the indigenous Iberians, the Celts, and the eventual establishment of Phoenician and Greek trading posts, followed by successive occupations in the city of various peoples including the Carthaginians, Romans, Suebi, Visigoths, and Moors.
context_section_description: A new era began in Lisbon on 1 November 1755, All Saints Day, when a devastating earthquake, one of the most powerful in recorded history, destroyed two thirds of the city. The first shock struck at 9:40 a.m., followed by another tremor at 10:00 a.m., and a third at noon. Many persons rushed to those squares beside the River Tagus with enough space to escape the collapsing structures of the city, but were drowned by a 7-metre high tsunami that flooded the river's mouth about half an hour later. After the earthquake, the tsunami, and subsequent fires, Lisbon lay in ruins. The large Royal Turret, the Casa das Índias, the Carmo Convent (Convento da Ordem do Carmo), the Court of the Inquisition, and the Hospital de Todos-os-Santos were destroyed. Thousands of buildings collapsed, including many churches, monasteries, nunneries, and palaces. Of the 20,000 less solidly built houses of the lower classes, 17,000 were destroyed. Many buildings occupied by the rich in the Bairro Alto neighbourhood survived, as well as some buildings made of solid stone in a few other areas. Major fires raged in the city for six days and there was rampant looting. Of the city's 180,000 inhabitants, between 30,000 and 60,000 died, while many others lost their entire property. The Marquis of Pombal, who was inspired by the new political, economic, and scientific theories of the Enlightenment and had such influence over the king that he was de facto ruler of Portugal, seized the opportunity presented by the catastrophe to implement in Portugal some of the liberal reforms that had been tried successfully in other western European countries.
  In 1756, the French philosopher and voice of the enlightenment, Voltaire, published a poem entitled Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne ("Poem on the Lisbon Disaster") which expressed the shock and disillusionment of European intellectuals after the Lisbon earthquake, as well as his own rejection of the philosophical optimism popularised by the English poet, Alexander Pope, in his poem, An Essay on Man. Voltaire subsequently used the catastrophic event in his novella Candide, published in 1759, to satirise Leibnizian optimism, religion, and war.
  Military engineers and surveyors under the supervision of chief engineer General Manuel da Maia (1672–1768), Colonel Carlos Mardel (1695–1763), and Captain Eugénio dos Santos (1711–1760) were ordered by the Marquis of Pombal to draw up plans for the rebuilding of the city, to inventory property claims, and to ensure that debris was removed safely and the bodies of the dead were disposed of in a sanitary manner. The Águas Livres Aqueduct (Aquaducto das Águas Livres), built by order of John V and put into service in 1748, was so well constructed that it was unharmed by the earthquake of 1755; it had 127 masonry arches, the highest of which is in the stretch crossing the Alcântara valley, and is 65 metres (213 ft) high.
  As part of the reconstruction of downtown Lisbon, a new naval arsenal was erected by order of Pombal at the same site on the banks of the Tagus, west of the royal palace, where many of the ships of the Portuguese age of exploration were built, among them the naus and galleons that had opened the trade route to India. It was a vast building containing naval magazines and offices of different departments of the naval service. Renamed the Arsenal Real da Marinha (Royal Navy Shipyard), the official maritime works of the Ribeira das Naus continued operating there as in the expansive days of Manuel I, who had ordered the construction of new shipyards (tercenas) on the site of the medieval shipyards.
  The 1st Marquis of Pombal, who had been born into the lower-ranking nobility, became effectively prime minister to Joseph I, after brief careers in the Portuguese army and the diplomatic service He famously responded to the king's query regarding what he should do about the devastation caused by the earthquake: "Bury the dead. Feed the living. Rebuild the city." This was a succinct expression of Pombal's approach to the recovery of the city's economy and social structure.
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caption: Church of Saint Anthony, in Lisbon, the birthplace of Saint Anthony of Padua, also known as Anthony of Lisbon. It was fully rebuilt after the 1755 earthquake to a Baroque-Rococo design by architect Mateus Vicente de Oliveira
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