Rossio

You are on Rossio, officially Praça de D. Pedro IV, though nobody calls it that. Since the Middle Ages this has been Lisbon's great popular square: markets, festivals, bullfights, demonstrations and, these days, meeting friends by the column.

1A square remade

The 1755 earthquake flattened its buildings. In the rebuilding, the architect Carlos Mardel made it rectangular and lined it with regular façades, like the rest of the Pombaline Baixa. To the east stood the great Royal Hospital of All Saints, also lost in the earthquake, where neighbouring Praça da Figueira is today.

2The sea beneath your feet

Look down. In 1848, on the initiative of General Eusébio Pinheiro Furtado, the square was paved with white limestone and black basalt laid in waves. The pattern, called mar largo, the open sea, made Portuguese pavement a symbol of the city and travelled with the Portuguese: the famous Copacabana promenade in Rio de Janeiro was inspired by it.

Calçada is laid by hand, stone by stone. It's a craft, that of the calceteiro, which Lisbon teaches in its own school.

3Trains and cafés

In the north-west corner stands Rossio station, opened in 1890, with its neo-Manueline façade and two horseshoe doorways. Around the square, century-old cafés and taverns are still open, such as Café Nicola or the tiny ginjinha bar on the neighbouring square.

4What to look out for

• The waves in the paving: look along it from one end to catch the optical effect.
• Rossio station, with its horseshoe doorways.
• The bronze fountains, one on each side of the column.