Praça do Comércio

In front of you lies the square that Lisboetas, out of habit, still call the Terreiro do Paço: the palace yard. The palace is gone, and its disappearance explains everything you can see.

1A palace by the water

Around 1511, King Manuel I left the old royal residence in the castle and moved down here, to the Paço da Ribeira, right on the waterfront where the ships from India docked. For more than two centuries this was the centre of power. One of its windows marked the end of Spanish rule: on 1 December 1640 the conspirators threw the Secretary of State, Miguel de Vasconcelos, out of it.

21755: earthquake, tsunami and fire

On the morning of 1 November 1755, All Saints' Day, an earthquake shook Lisbon. It was followed by a wave that surged up the Tagus and a fire that burned for days. The palace and its library, with tens of thousands of volumes, were lost.

The minister Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, later Marquis of Pombal, drove a rational rebuilding: straight streets, matching buildings and a square open to the river, designed by Eugénio dos Santos. It would no longer be the palace square, but the square of Commerce.

On 1 February 1908, at the western corner of this square, near Rua do Arsenal, King Carlos I and his heir, Luís Filipe, were assassinated.

3What to look out for

• The equestrian statue of José I, by Joaquim Machado de Castro, unveiled in 1775. Notice the horse trampling snakes.
• The Cais das Colunas, the two pillars and the marble steps by the water: Lisbon's ceremonial entrance from the river.
• The arcades: beneath them, Café Martinho da Arcada, a favourite of Fernando Pessoa, is still open.