Lisbon's central square, still named for a king it never wanted
Rossio is Lisbon's old public square, a rectangle of black-and-white paving where the Estaus Palace once housed the Portuguese Inquisition and its first auto-da-fé burned in 1540. Rebuilt in Pombaline style after the 1755 earthquake, it carries an 1870 column to King Pedro IV, though Lisbon never calls it by that official name.
The Inquisition burned its first victims on this ground
Rossio Square is Lisbon's old public square, a rectangle of black-and-white paving in the heart of downtown. Lisbon's own name for it never changed, even after the state gave it a king's name in 1874. In the Middle Ages it was the city's horse market, and the ground saw bullfights, fairs, and public executions for centuries. Around 1450, the Estaus Palace went up on its north side, built to house visiting dignitaries. By 1536, the palace had become the headquarters of the Portuguese Inquisition, with a prison inside it for the accused. In 1540, Portugal's first auto-da-fé, a ritual burning of people condemned by the Inquisition, took place here in front of the palace. On the square's east side, King Manuel I finished the All-Saints Royal Hospital in 1504, a building that served Lisbon's sick for over two centuries.
An earthquake and a massacre remade the square twice
The 1755 earthquake tore through Rossio and flattened nearly everything standing on it. The hospital collapsed. The Estaus Palace survived the quake itself, only to burn down in a fire in 1836. Architects Eugénio dos Santos and Carlos Mardel rebuilt the square afterward in the plain, orderly Pombaline style that still lines it today. On the old palace site, the D. Maria II National Theatre opened in 1846, its neoclassical front in the same place where the Inquisition once held court. In 1838, forces loyal to the prime minister killed around 100 people here, crushing a National Guard revolt in what became known as the Rossio massacre. In 1870, a 23-meter marble column topped with a bronze statue of King Pedro IV went up at the center of the square, the monument that gave it its official name.
A king's statue, not Maximilian's, crowns the column
The bronze statue on top of the column has carried a persistent legend. The story goes that it was first sculpted for Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, and sold to Lisbon cheap after he was shot in 1867. Historians, including José Augusto, call this a myth. The statue's buttons bear the Portuguese coat of arms, its collar the Order of the Tower and Sword, and the figure holds the Constitutional Charter that Pedro IV wrote himself. In 1874, the square took its official name, Praça de D. Pedro IV, after the statue went up, but Lisbon never adopted it. People here have always called the square Rossio.
A railway station and a fire reshaped the square
Between 1886 and 1887, architect José Luís Monteiro built the Rossio railway station on the square's northwest corner, its stone front cut with horseshoe arches in a Neo-Manueline style. It opened to trains in 1890 and linked Lisbon to Sintra. In 1889, two Baroque fountains arrived from the Val d'Osne foundry in France, cast with figures by Mathurin Moreau and Michel Lienard, and took their places flanking the column. Lisbon paved the square itself in black-and-white wave patterns in 1848, a design later copied onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro by workers sent over from Lisbon. The D. Maria II National Theatre kept running through the 20th century until a fire gutted its interior in 1964, leaving the facade standing. The Lisbon Metro opened its Rossio station below the square in 1963, putting a subway stop under the old horse market.
Cafés and a theatre still anchor the old square
Rossio today still runs as Lisbon's meeting point, with its cafés doing the same work they always did. Café Nicola has stood here since the 18th century, once the haunt of poet Manuel Maria Barbosa du Bocage. Café Suiça, open since the late 1800s, keeps tables out on the pavement facing the column. The D. Maria II National Theatre, rebuilt behind its old facade, became a National Monument in 2012. The column at the center still carries its four allegorical figures, Justice, Courage, Restraint, and Wisdom, at its base. The train station still sends commuters out to Sintra from the same horseshoe arches Monteiro designed. Praça da Figueira sits a few hundred feet east, another square built where the old hospital once stood.
The square still runs in black-and-white stone around a column raised for a king Lisbon never stopped calling by the name of its own ground.
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