Historical Guide to an African Lisbon – Isabel Castro Henriques

Lisbon, a city with as many hills and valleys as there are myths about its history and the populations who invented it, spreads along the banks of the Tagus, at the point where the river ends its meanderings through the Iberian landscape and plunges into the Atlantic Ocean.

Lisbon carne into being on the hill where the Castle of St. George now stands, and where a Bronze Age settlement left traces of its former existence, mixing with the many other marks made in the city by Greeks, Phoenicians, Lusitanians, Romans, Visigoths, Arabs,Jews and Christians. A long list of peoples and cultures, stories and legends, gods and heroes, who, like the city’s mythical founder, Ulysses – Olisipo – to whom it owes its name, built and rebuilt this urban space.