Three spectacular ancient cities.
Each on the crossroads of cultures.
I'm Janina Ramirez.
And I'm Alastair Sooke.
In this series, we'll be discovering the artistic influences
that shaped the stories of Beirut, Lisbon and Baku.
Helping make them some of the world's most exciting destinations.
Hi!
We'll delve into centuries of rich culture and tradition...
This place tells us a story that goes back two millennia.
..and experience how art is reinvigorating the cities today.
We'll encounter breathtaking sights...
It's quite overblown, isn't it? It's totally overblown.
..and discover hidden gems.
Wow!
TRAM BELL DINGS
And in this episode, we're in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon.
Today it's an increasingly fashionable city,
but with layers of rich culture and history.
Oh, we've got sunshine!
I know! So, first time to Lisbon for you?
I've never been to this city.
What about you? Yeah, no, first time for me as well,
and, yeah, I'm really excited.
Lisbon is the only European capital on the Atlantic coast
and the world's first truly global city.
We want to explore
the different ways its interaction with the rest of the world
has shaped today's Lisbon.
From the days of maritime discovery
when Portuguese ships went out across the oceans...
I'm keen to find out about the cultural exchange
between Lisbon and the world beyond.
..to the years of repressive dictatorship
when Portugal seemed closed to the world.
I want to get a sense of what it means to be Portuguese.
There's this nice blend between sort of brand-spanking-new
and then this sort of almost decadent,
derelict edge to the city, too.
I suddenly have a sense of what you have planned.
Your eyes lit up mentioning the decadent side of Lisbon.
We'll see if we can find it.
One of the first things you notice about Lisbon is its hills.
And where there are hills, there's always a good view.
So we want to head straight up to the city's 1,100-year-old castle
to see what we can see.
And to get there, we've got hold of two of Lisbon's
brand-new fleet of electric bikes
because no ordinary bicycle will do on these gradients!
JANINA CHUCKLES Aah!
It definitely kicks in. Actually quite... Quite quick!
LAUGHING: Oh, my God!
Not surprisingly, I never pass up a chance to visit a medieval castle
and the city's Moorish citadel
is a great place to kick off our dash around the city.
I think you get a sense, looking out here,
of all of the different layers of this place.
I know, it's amazing, isn't it? It's stunning, this view.
And crucially, always involving that river.
Cos I know the Romans were here.
205 BC, that's when they occupied Lisbon.
It's a long river, the River Tagus,
and it goes right into Spain and then all the way out into the ocean.
And just the idea that this city has been here for even longer than Rome,
it's older than Rome.
I know! So many layers.
I mean, if you go back,
even before the Romans there were Phoenicians here.
I have a little piece of poetry for you.
SHE LAUGHS
OK. There's a wonderful Portuguese poet, 20th-century poet,
called Fernando Pessoa.
He called this place, "A fair vision in a dream,
"clear-cut against a bright blue sky."
SHE LAUGHS I feel like I should say that on one knee, or something.
But anyway, let's go and enjoy the dream. Oh, God, it's so romantic, Alastair!
For any traveller who wants to do more
than just scratch the surface of a city,
an understanding of its history is essential.
And one thing I find fascinating
is that for a large part of the 20th century,
Portugal was isolated from the rest of the world
under the dictatorship of Antonio Salazar.
And, yet, at heart, Lisbon has always been an outward-looking city.
After all, it was from HERE, 500 years ago,
that Portuguese ships set out to explore the world,
an exhilarating period known as the Age of Discovery.
And the next stop on our tour around Lisbon
seems to perfectly encapsulate the city's complex past.
Look at the scale of this thing.
Th... This is really quite an extraordinary monument, isn't it?
They're huge!
Can we take a step back so we can actually see our, um...
..these giants, giants of history?
Massive! So, probably the most famous is, of course, Vasco da Gama.
Mm. So, discovers the sea passage to India,
which completely transforms world history, because, suddenly,
all this wealth, they control that trade route.
All this wealth flows into Lisbon,
making this city extraordinarily powerful in its own right
and extremely wealthy.
So, it's an expression of nationalism and pride,
and it's got sort of elements of fascist monumentality.
It's quite overblown, isn't it? It's totally overblown.
And it's going up under the Salazar regime, under a dictatorship.
I mean, in a way, it expresses so many of the contradictions
at the heart of this city,
at the heart of Lisbon.
Don't you find that paradox fascinating though?
It feels like there are these crucial periods in Lisbon's history
where Lisbon and Portugal are really outward-looking,
they're literally exploring the world,
but other moments when they're very inward-looking, it's isolationist,
and that tension...
I feel like this monument sums that up,
and that's surely what we're going to find is part of the character of the city.
That's what we need to explore, I think.
So, first off, I think we need to learn more
about this glorious age in Portuguese history -
the Age of Discovery.
So, I'm going to visit a Unesco World Heritage Site,
the Belem Tower -
a symbol of 16th-century Portuguese power and prestige.
While I'm taking a little boat trip with historian Paulo Pinto.
Great to meet you.
Given that so much of Lisbon's history depends on the sea,
I think you have to get a sense of the city from the water.
I want to know more about how Portuguese sailors
established the fabled sea passage to India.
Their achievement enabled Lisbon to capture the lucrative spice trade.
Everybody knows about Vasco da Gama
and that famous sea passage to India, but, you know, this is...
That's one discovery amongst many that the Portuguese made
over many, many different decades.
This was actually a quite long and slow and complex process.
Let me show you.
Here we have a 1502 map, the so-called Cantino map.
So, it's early, and, look, you can see the contours of Africa
very clearly, actually.
That looks really accurate.
Yes, because when the map was drawn,
the Portuguese had, well, more than half a century of contact
in the shores of Africa.
And, so, for the first time,
what was important was this new information,
a practical one,
and not the authority of the geographers of the antiquity.
This is the modern sensibility. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
The Cape was sailed for the first time by Bartolomeu Dias in 1488.
It was him that, for the first time,
proved that Portuguese could reach India by sea.
When he discovered that he was already in other ocean,
he returned to Portugal to give the information.
Uh, and the role of Vasco da Gama, uh, 12 years later,
was not exactly a practical feat, it was a political move.
Cos they knew they could do it by that point. Yeah.
Vasco da Gama was not a sailor, he was a captain,
he was a representative of the King of Portugal.
While Alastair's been out on his boat,
I've been exploring the Belem Tower.
This is an incredibly beautiful building.
You can see why it's a Unesco World Heritage Site.
It was begun at the end of the 15th century under King John II
and then completed under that most famous of Portuguese rulers,
Manuel I.
It's just gorgeous.
The tower was begun in 1515,
just after the return of Vasco da Gama from India,
and was designed to defend Lisbon against attack.
So, this isn't just a symbol of defence,
it's also an expression of the way
that Portugal wants to project itself internationally.
So, you've got these crosses of the Order of Christ.
These were emblazoned on the sails and banners
of the ships that went out.
So, they'd have been the first thing
that new parts of the world would see
when the Portuguese ships arrived on their shores.
And then you've got the armillary globe.
This was a navigation tool.
It's a really interesting symbol
for Manuel to have attached his whole dynasty to so early on,
but it sums up that sense that Portugal is all about exploration,
navigation and command of the oceans.
You know, even just looking at this,
it's so clear that this was a glorious age.
And, still now, I guess, it's a key part,
a really important part of national identity, here, in Portugal.
It's our Golden Age of our history.
At the same time, some sort of mythical image, we have.
The Portuguese Colonial Overseas Empire is the oldest one in Europe
because it started in the 15th century
and only finished 18 years ago.
And such a long period of time, of course,
leave us a romantic image of this past,
but also very deep scars that are still healing now
and very visible in our present, here, in the Portuguese society.
I still feel that the Age of Discoveries
is a tremendously exciting period of history.
This great transition from an older medieval world view and mind-set
relying on all of these ancient sources,
and then this switch to a modern sensibility -
pragmatic, practical, curious, interested in science,
interested in exploring and discovery
and trying to extend the bounds of human knowledge.
But, of course, part of the motivation for that was...
commercial gain,
the prestige and political power of the Portuguese crown
trying to project on the world stage,
and just think about the name for this period of history -
the Age of Discoveries.
It sounds, and is, a very exciting phrase,
but it also contains an element of ambiguity.
It's totally from the perspective of Europe.
Now we've both had a taste of the city's maritime past,
one place we wanted to see is the enormous Jeronimos Monastery.
Not far from the quayside,
it was built with the first flush of cash from the Indian spice trade.
Wow! This is stunning, this building.
Absolutely breathtaking.
Yeah. Absolute kind of essential side to Lisbon, really, isn't it?
Yeah, I think, like,
THE architectural masterpiece of the city.
While Alastair heads into the church,
I've come to look at the cloisters of the monastery
to take a closer look
at the style of architecture for which this building is famous.
This has got to be the finest example of Manueline Gothic,
that incredible flourishing of Portuguese architecture
that really peaks around the beginning of the 16th century.
It's an extraordinary architectural style because it combines
so many different influences.
You've got the essence of Gothic architecture here
with sprung vaults,
but there are elements here that are distinctive.
The conical pinnacles at the top up there,
and then the shape of the arches.
Instead of being pointed Gothic arches, they're rounded.
And in this respect, this sort of architecture
is referencing Italian urban architecture,
Flemish architecture, but also Mudejar,
that Spanish coming together of Moorish and Christian architecture.
Now, I've come to the church for an important reason,
because summer of 1497, it was to a church on this site
that the great Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama,
came to pray before he embarked on that fateful maritime voyage
in which he established sea passage to India.
And this is his tomb.
Now, the thing about it is that... the carving, the sculpture
is actually... It's 19th century.
But that's interesting in its own right because it tells us that
throughout the centuries,
Vasco da Gama's been a key hero in terms of Portuguese culture,
and I felt you can't come to Lisbon and not come and pay homage
to the great hero of the Age of Discoveries.
But there's another detail in the church, in a way,
I think is even more poignant and interesting.
I gleaned from this little-known guidebook,
written in the '20s by the great Portuguese poet Pessoa,
and he talks about coming in this church, and you look up,
all of this ornate embellishment and decoration,
and up in the vault ceiling above you see all of these bronze discs,
these escutcheons, I think, is the technical term.
They're emblems,
coats of arms that once actually adorned the Portuguese caravels
that sailed from Lisbon to Brazil, to India, and back again.
And it's fascinating to look at them here because the Portuguese
were obviously so proud of these things,
they've embedded them in the very fabric,
the structure of the architecture of this place.
You can sense from them, the way they've been oxidised,
some of them are damaged...
It feels, looking at them,
you have that sense of ocean spray corroding them as these ships
are travelling thousands of miles the open sea
without seeing land for days and days on end.
And, of course,
also there are always these two key Portuguese emblems from this period.
The armillary sphere and then that Portuguese cross.
I've spent a lot of time
in cathedrals, monasteries, cloisters...
This space blows them all away.
Manueline Gothic is such an amazing hybrid.
It has created this remarkably exuberant and beautiful place.
Right next door to the monastery
is arguably the best place to sample the sweet treats
that have become synonymous with Lisbon...
Custard tarts.
And these particular tarts are made to a secret recipe,
developed inside the monastery itself.
These are ours.
Excellent. This is the moment I have been waiting for most of all,
without sounding greedy. Well, you've got a sweet tooth, haven't you?
Obrigada. Thanks. OK.
So... Look at this.
Now, we have to put some cinnamon on them, apparently.
A spice! Yeah. I see! Another nod to Portuguese history.
Absolutely. The, uh, trading of spices, particularly with India,
that's all reflected in this little treat, isn't it?
You've done that very delicately. Thank you.
Yeah, I don't know... BOTH: Cheers.
BOTH LAUGH
Mm!
I mean, it's really flaky, the pastry on the outside, and crisp...
I know. It's quite substantial.
Yeah. I mean, I think... It's quite savoury almost.
..we'll be done now if we have this, we won't need any lunch or dinner.
They're really good.
That monastery, it absolutely blew my mind.
Yeah. I mean, I go to a lot of old places.
We've been all over the world.
That place is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been and I...
I think what it's made me realise
is that this moment in Portuguese history,
the Age of Discoveries,
it was so important in terms of opening up Europe
to the rest of the world,
but the art and the creativity that emerged,
particularly just in those first few decades,
in that flurry at the beginning of the 16th century,
it's left such a mark.
I am absolutely enamoured with Lisbon.
Yes, me, too, actually. It has just...
There are very few places that have made me feel
quite so surprised as Lisbon has.
It's a fabulous city, um... Yeah.
I know that having just eaten some of these, I think that helps.
SHE LAUGHS But, no, it is fantastic.
But there's still quite a lot that we want to see, right?
Yeah, there's still loads to discover!
Let's finish these coffees and our two more tarts... Come on, then.
More sugar. ..and we're off.
One of the more visible legacies of the Moorish influence in Lisbon
is to be found on its walls.
They're among the first things you notice when you arrive in the city.
Lisbon's such a colourful city
and everywhere you look on the surface of buildings
there are tiles.
They're all different designs, shapes, colours.
It can actually feel like the whole city is one big tile museum.
Tiles, or azulejo in Portuguese,
are such an important part of the country's art history
that they do indeed have their own museum,
a place I had to come and see for myself.
From church altarpieces to mythical scenes,
decorative detailing to modernist geometries,
there are tiles here of almost every shape and size.
But the real surprise for me is a vast panorama of Lisbon.
This extraordinary collection of azulejo
shows the city of Lisbon before the catastrophic earthquake of 1755
and it's a wonderful document of the time.
You've got some buildings that survive, like the castle up there,
the cathedral, the great Commercial Square,
but others that are entirely lost, like the royal palace over here.
And they were designed to be in a square room,
so you'd walk into the centre and be surrounded by this panorama,
almost like virtual reality,
that you could see it all from this bird's-eye view.
I think it's an incredible historical document,
but, to me, it's also a testament to how much longevity this medium
of azulejo had, that it could be adapted from the 16th, 17th,
18th century and always remain relevant.
Lisbon's tiles make it feel as if public art
is part of the city's DNA.
So, while Nina's been at the Tile Museum,
I've been exploring why Lisbon's walls have become the canvas
for some remarkably innovative street art.
I just think this is so fascinating because I'm in the middle of the
business district of Lisbon.
And if you looked at the vista behind me, you'd never know it
because you've got these three really grand buildings,
but they're all derelict and they've all been covered
with the most extraordinary street art,
which just feels utterly incongruous and out of place.
But it's this great eruption of energy
in the middle of an otherwise quite staid part of Lisbon.
What I like about the street art that I've seen in Lisbon
is it's really quite inventive, and this is a great example.
It's created out of all sorts of junk and detritus, and yet,
here is this derelict building,
which would be, frankly, an eyesore without this delightful fox.
But since he's here, with those quite cute eyes staring down,
suddenly, this is something to come and see.
This is an asset for the city.
I doubt this particular spot next to the motorway
with the flyover, all of the traffic,
would be on most tourists' bucket list,
but there is here this wonderful example of street art.
This extraordinary mural on this derelict building.
And it's indicative of that booming street art scene,
here in the city, here in Lisbon,
and I'm about to meet one of the key members of that whole movement,
a street artist called Vhils.
It's amazing, this.
Poignant and melancholic...
It's like, I don't know, the soul of the city or something staring back.
That's right, the point that I, you know, that I try to do in my work.
It's humanising places that were kind of forgotten in the city.
And who is this? It's from...people in the city.
So, it's a series of portraits that I do
from different places in the... Just ordinary people?
Ordinary people, everyday heroes that go from A to B,
that struggle to, you know,
pay their bills and to make themselves sustainable.
Most street art, if I were to come and meet a street artist,
you'd think, "Here's something that they designed, it's a stencil,
"they spray-painted it, or they painted it quickly on the wall."
Mm-hm. This clearly has not been created like that.
It's a very different process.
You're carving into the wall to create the image... Exactly.
..rather than painting onto it.
So, in Lisbon we had the revolution in '74,
so we had a lot of political murals.
It was like the walls in the city, they were reflecting the times and the changes of the country.
And then the advertising started to show up and at one point I came up
with the idea of just, instead of adding,
I would extract and reveal the insides of the city.
What was underneath all these layers of information
that are in the public space.
There's the Carnation Revolution, right, in '74? Yeah.
Can you almost see that as...
..a force in why the street art movement suddenly burgeons
in the wake of that?
It was one of the longest dictatorships in Europe.
Completely blackout of cultural, visual influence from outside.
So, people took the streets to, you know, to have their sayings.
The parties, the different ideologies
were using the public space as a way to communicate their ideals.
I think for sure it was a big influence
and I remember, I mean, growing up surrounded by all these murals that were everywhere,
and without a doubt they were influencing me
in all the art that I create.
In today's Lisbon,
I found it easy to forget that until relatively recently,
Portugal was under the shadow of the inward-looking and isolationist
dictatorship of Antonio Salazar.
Beginning in the 1930s and lasting more than four decades,
it was a period that saw the cultural life of the city
severely restricted.
And yet, during the Second World War,
something quite unexpected happened.
Lisbon became a crossroads for diplomats, refugees and spies.
I've come to the Hotel Palacio on the outskirts of Lisbon.
This is an exclusive resort
and I'm here to find out about the role that this place played
in the espionage of World War II.
Obrigada.
During the war, it was in this hotel
that British intelligence officer Ian Fleming
first got the inspiration for that most famous of all spies,
James Bond.
That's because it was one of the few places in Europe
where enemy diplomats could rub shoulders.
And the reason for all this activity was that Portugal remained neutral
during the war.
It's the perfect excuse for a martini or two
with historian Irene Pimentel,
who can help me get a sense of this extraordinary period.
What was Salazar's motivation then
for keeping Portugal neutral during the war?
Portugal wanted mostly to protect the colonies.
OK?
It was very tiny, it was very poor,
and it knew very well it would be a catastrophe
if Portugal went into the war.
But at the same time,
Great Britain didn't want and the Germans, too, didn't want.
It was the place where the information went and came.
OK? Troca. It was, um...
Information, merchandise,
everything went through Lisbon.
So, Lisbon in World War II,
it's a place where lots of people are flooding in.
You've got visiting royals, dignitaries, spies, refugees,
but they're not coming and staying, are they?
They are in transit.
They're coming through and then they're going out on the ocean,
off to New York, off on ocean liners.
Absolutely. Polish people - because Poland was already occupied.
Um, political refugees.
Jewish refugees, which were already in flight from other countries.
Portugal was the last town of Europe they saw.
So, it was the symbol of Europe that they didn't want to leave.
But as the wave came - the wave went away in '45 -
nobody, almost nobody, stayed in Portugal of the refugees,
because Salazar didn't want that.
He knew very well that it would change.
A cosmopolitan Portugal was something they didn't want.
While Nina's been enjoying a bit of luxury,
I'm in what used to be the poorest part of the city,
the old Alfama quarter of Lisbon.
I'm here because this is the place most intimately connected
with an art form that thrived under the Salazar dictatorship.
But its fascinating history
transcends the close-mindedness of those difficult years.
Fado means fate,
and it's a style of music that developed in Lisbon
in the 19th century,
and expresses a kind of yearning, known in Portuguese as saudade.
It was later popularised by stars such as Amalia Rodrigues.
MUSIC: Estranha Forma De Vida by Amalia Rodrigues
I've come to the Fado Museum and it's great, good fortune,
because they have this exhibition about fado in art on at the moment,
and it just so happens that probably the greatest painting of fado
is just through here.
It's an immensely stylish image.
It was painted in the early years of the 20th century, 1910,
by an artist called Jose Malhoa.
He went to this particular district of the city,
this working-class neighbourhood, just near the castle,
and he found a fado singer called Amancio,
who we see depicted in the picture.
And he was quite a shadowy character.
As well as singing fado, he was a pimp, a petty thief,
and this is probably one of his prostitutes,
a woman known as Adelaide, or Adelaide da Facada,
Adelaide of the stab wound, because her left cheek had this stab wound,
which, of course, you can't actually see in the picture itself.
But there are all sorts of clues
to this disreputable world that we're in,
this bohemian subculture.
If you look closely, you can see this tattoo, these dots,
five dots on her hand, which was a remnant of her time in prison.
And her state of undress, the dirtiness of her skirt,
despite its blazing red colour, this very satisfying pictorial device.
The fact that she's clearly wearing this negligee,
which is quite loose, shall we say.
So, it all suggests what her line of work was.
So you might think the entire image is quite judgmental
about these two figures from this shadowy world,
but it isn't presented like that.
I don't think we're invited to judge these two people in a negative way
and there's a sense of great commitment
to their intimate informal moment.
There's great sincerity and authenticity to this picture,
as they are completely present,
as Amancio is performing
on this distinctive Portuguese guitar, 12-stringed.
In order to play that instrument, you have to be immensely virtuosic.
And she's listening with such abandon,
but it's abandon in a positive thing.
It's abandon in the name of something that will allow her
to transcend the grubby day-to-day realities of her job
and take you to a higher plane full of yearning, melancholy
and, I guess, it's called saudade.
We've met up again and we're heading across town.
If there's one thing in Lisbon I really wanted to experience,
it's the city's wonderful yellow trams.
I mean, that's...
Very pretty, these trams. Mm, mm!
I mean, I kind of thought that getting on them would be quite
a cheesy tourist... It's like an almost theme-parky thing to do.
But, actually, it's standing room only
and everyone here seems to be residents of Lisbon.
They're rather juddery, aren't they? BOTH LAUGH
You know, I think the reason they still have these ancient trams
is that they are... They're really practical. Yeah.
They work. They can manoeuvre these small streets and hills, which...
Imagine being in a double-decker here.
I mean, you know, you wouldn't leave. It's not going to work, no. Yeah.
I'm enjoying it because it really does give you a sense of the city.
Mm-hm. You get to wind around in it and...
..look, holding up the rest of the traffic,
we're getting the best view.
As Portugal went out into the world, so too did the world come to Lisbon,
including a large number of African slaves.
In fact, by the mid-16th century,
it's estimated that 10% of Lisbon's population was black.
I've noticed that not much of this is commemorated here in Lisbon.
There's no monument to the African slaves that were brought here,
no major museum about slavery.
The name of this road translates as,
"the street of the pit of the blacks"
and it was on this street that there was a pit where the bodies of slaves
were dumped.
It's clear that Lisbon has a hidden African history
and to uncover some of it, historian and guide Jose Antunes
is here to tell me more.
So, Nina, here we have one of the most interesting places
in terms of African history of Lisbon.
This is a fountain, and this is the fountain
where the ships could come and load water from.
Oh, so they could fill up containers,
just take them straight onto the ships... OK.
You know, fountains were obviously very important.
This particular one,
the King decided its nine taps were to be divided
among different groups of people.
The first one would be for the ships to use... Uh-huh.
..then the Africans - two of them.
Two for the Moors. Two for the new Christians, the former Jews.
And finally, two for the proper old Christians.
It really reveals us what was society like
and these tensions from that early 1500 period.
And the best thing about this place is that we have this painting.
Ooh! It's a Flemish painting from the 1500s.
A Flemish painting?
Yeah. I never identified the author.
And as you can clearly see, the fountain is there.
When you look at the painting,
more than 50% of the people depicted here are Africans.
One of the most amazing parts of this is this knight.
Well, that's what I'm just looking at.
What we know about this figure,
he's almost certainly a certain Joao de Sa
who was a slave at the...
At the royal family household - let's put it like this. Mm-hm.
And he was raised with King John III,
so he was like King's buddy.
Oh! The King that later gave him his freedom...
And he was even to become a knight of the Santiago Order.
But, obviously, we have to look at this character of our history
as really the exception that confirms the rule.
Mm. This is a very unusual situation.
So what happened to this massive African population in Lisbon
after the 16th century?
They obviously integrate the lower ranks of society, most of them,
and, um, even the district, the Mocambo of Lisbon,
that African district,
will gradually transform into a sort of fishermen
and stevedores, dockers... Mm!
..kind of district that is nowadays the Madragoa.
If you talk about this to most Lisboners and Portuguese,
that there were so many Africans here in the 1500s,
most of them certainly will be surprised for that...
Mm. ..and will look at you and say,
"How that was possible and how did it happen?"
This is such an important aspect of Lisbon's history,
that it was this gateway that began that opening of the worlds
and the movement of people as goods coming through this place.
Do you think Portugal will have to address this issue in the future?
I mean, it should. Mm.
If it will or not, that's a different thing.
Lisbon's African side is something that I'm keen to explore as well.
So, I've come well beyond the edge of any tourist map
to the outskirts of the city
where I've arranged to meet professional photographer
Erberto Smith.
Through his pictures, Erberto is working to increase the visibility
of young people of African descent in Portuguese society.
I'm here because I want to get a sense
of whether they've been able to find a place
in an increasingly open and prosperous Lisbon.
Is part of the point of doing this project because you feel
that these people you're taking portraits of are, in a sense,
almost invisible in some ways in Portuguese society? Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. They are invisible and, uh...
..people are afraid of them also, you know?
What I'm doing, it's for me, it's for them, and to...
And make people more comfortable, more, uh...
..aware of their presence, you know?
We have a lot of problem and people just don't want to see it
cos it's difficult when you are in position of privilege, you know?
You don't see what...what... how the other felt, you know?
Today, Erberto is in a housing estate
to photograph two music producers,
Safari and Landim.
I'd love to hear what this sort of area's like to live in.
OK.
Sometimes Portugal's been so open
to people from other parts of the world
and there have been other times when the society's been
a little more closed, perhaps,
and I wonder what it feels like at the moment, for you.
He say, "I think it's more open."
So you don't dream of one day maybe leaving Lisbon to live in New York,
Los Angeles, London, wherever?
You'd like to stay here?
I hadn't fully appreciated till coming here that this place,
it clearly has quite a notorious reputation within Lisbon.
I don't think most tourists, certainly, to Lisbon,
would come and visit this area.
It's seen as a bit of a no-go place.
But when asked if they wanted to leave the city,
get out and find somewhere else, they were saying,
"No, we love Lisbon."
That, for me, if I were living here, would be a cause of optimism,
even if there clearly are some quite severe social problems that still
need to be worked out and resolved.
I've met up with Alastair again
and our next stop in exploring the more outward-looking aspects
of Lisbon's culture is the National Museum.
We're on the hunt for artworks that can tell the story of Portugal's
growing global expansion.
This is a masterpiece of Portuguese art.
A set of six painted panels from the 15th century
known as the St Vincent Panels.
In the middle there you can see the saint depicted twice -
patron saint of Lisbon -
alongside the court of Portugal, the church, the archbishops
and the common people, all represented alongside each other.
It's a statement, really, of how powerful
the court of Portugal was becoming in the 15th century.
So, possibly there, next to the saint,
you have a depiction of Henry the Navigator,
this important Portuguese prince who began this Age of Discovery,
the expansion of the Portuguese Empire.
And the fact that these paintings were made at all at this point,
shows that the court was rich enough to be investing in painters,
in culture, in art, and really getting the very finest of artists.
I find this one of the most extraordinary objects
in the entire museum.
It's this stunning exquisite piece of goldware that was created
at the beginning of the 16th century.
It has an unusual name, this object.
It's called a monstrance, which is, essentially,
something which holds the consecrated host during a service,
the transubstantiated body of Christ, the wafer,
which would be in that glass segment in the middle.
This came from a period in Portugal's history
when all of this wealth was flowing into Lisbon
because the actual gold that was used to make this
was brought back to Lisbon by Vasco da Gama
on his second voyage to India,
and it came from the kingdom of Kilwa in Africa,
which I think is now in present-day Tanzania.
And that's the material substance that this was created from,
a reminder of Portugal's dominion, if you like, over the world.
When we think of the Renaissance, the 16th century,
and the way that it's manifesting in places like Italy,
where it's looking to the classical past for inspiration,
that period takes on
a very different complexion artistically in Portugal
because this is the time of huge exploration and expansion.
The Portuguese are engaging
with a completely different set of cultures -
African, and indeed Indian.
And this starts to manifest itself in art and culture.
So, furniture in particular - this is a great example.
It's a cabinet that is Portuguese in style, in design,
but in its execution and its decoration,
it is very much inspired by this contact with India.
And that even stretches down here to the legs where you can see
that they have taken inspiration from Indian gods.
And, so, despite the fact that it's for a Portuguese audience,
for a Portuguese client,
they had this taste for the exotic
that's ever increasing as you get into the 16th century.
I have spotted some, I think, really gorgeous works of art in this room,
and surprisingly, they're not actually Portuguese at all,
they're Japanese.
17th-century Japanese works of art. GORGEOUS, golden works of art.
And it depicts the exchange commercially and culturally
between the Portuguese and the Japanese,
because the Portuguese were the first Europeans
to set foot on Japan, to land there, first of all in 1543.
And these wonderful paintings date
from maybe half a century after that
and it's all about the intermingling of these two cultures.
And if you look at the other screen,
you get an even greater sense of the way that the Portuguese
were received by the Japanese,
because you've got the Portuguese ship arriving again
and there's some quite high-level trade negotiations
taking place on the deck.
And then on this side, you have the procession of them.
And the way they're painted is quite funny.
I mean, genuinely. These are caricatures.
You can see that the Japanese artist who created this -
at the beginning of the 17th century -
relished the difference of their facial features,
relished their strange, unusual ballooning costumes -
have a look at their trousers -
but it's a reminder that these paper screens
are fabulous historical documents
that shed all sorts of light on the complexity and the energy
and the excitement of this cultural and commercial interchange
between Lisbon and Portugal and Japan.
Ah!
So, we've looked at different things, haven't we?
What did, uh...? What did you look at?
I saw some pretty amazing things.
I mean, in terms of this Age of Discoveries being this golden era
of Portuguese history, I think you see that immediately.
It's almost like my favourite parts of art history
are those where you see all these different forces and influences
from different parts of the world coming together into one object.
And the monstrance, this golden Manueline object - stunning... Mm!
..is a great example of that.
Yeah, the hybrid nature, I agree.
I mean, I think these cultural transitions are fascinating
and what makes Portuguese visual art and culture so interesting
is that they choose some very broad and exotic influences.
So, I looked at Indo-Portuguese furniture.
You know, direct influences being taken from Goa, from India,
brought into Portugal and given this sort of European twist.
It's, uh... It could only happen here.
I also love the fact that actually seeing these objects
just makes this point so much more emphatically.
You know, you can read about the Age of Discoveries,
you can look at a map and say,
"Oh, yeah, they just went round the Cape of Good Hope, they went to India,"
but these are really distant places. Mm.
Particularly in, like, the 16th century.
And to see the objects that they brought back
just brings home the scale, I guess, of that achievement.
I'm on my way to see the work of one of my favourite painters.
Just out of town is a museum
dedicated to Portugal's most famous living artist, Paula Rego.
Rego has lived most of her life in Britain,
in part to escape the repressive Salazar dictatorship.
But her connection to Portugal has remained strong.
In fact, some of her art has even helped change Portuguese law
and it's those works in particular that I'm hoping to see.
I'm so sorry for the noise because it's the air conditioners.
So, here they are.
Oh, wow!
Gosh. So, these are the prints, obviously.
Yeah, she made in 1998,
because there was a big referendum in Portugal to legalise abortion,
and this is a very important issue
for Paula.
So, she made these prints
in order to create awareness about this problem
that women had to have secret abortions.
I find them really gritty and disturbing,
but they're part of day-to-day life
in Portugal at this stage, aren't they?
Yeah, yeah. And Paula had had abortions herself, hadn't she?
Yes, yes. And women of her generation, they had...
There were not any kind of contraception in that period,
so they had really to do abortions.
Yeah. So, they were falling pregnant repeatedly... Yes.
..cos there was no way of stopping it.
Of course. And then the men were not taking responsibility.
Yeah. So, it was up to the women to find someone.
You see, I find these so...moving.
I mean, it's almost like they're in a surgery with the legs raised up.
Yeah. But they're just chairs. They're just domestic chairs.
Yeah, it...
So, all of the things that should be in place to keep the woman safe
and free from infection...
Yeah. Yes. ..there's none of that.
Yeah. And it worked, didn't it?
Absolutely. Because there was a change.
There was another referendum. Yes, exactly.
And now people, women have access to public health services.
Amazing. Yeah. So-So...she has brought about this social change...
Oh, this is exciting!
I've been allowed to explore the archives a little bit by myself
and there's one particular artwork by Paula Rego
that I'm just desperate to find.
So, I think it's down here. I'm going to keep looking.
This was what I was looking for. It's known as Angel.
She refers to it as "Guardian Angel".
This is part of a sequence she made
illustrating events from a poem known as The Crime Of Father Amaro
and in that there's a priest who falls in love with a woman
and this woman undergoes extreme suffering and pain.
This isn't an event that takes place in the poem,
she has created this from her imagination,
and what she is showing is an imagined scene
in which the wronged woman can finally get revenge
for the crimes against her.
She's used this religious iconography, the sponge,
like the sponge with vinegar that was offered to Christ
as some sort of salve to his suffering during his crucifixion.
And then the dagger, the ultimate symbol of revenge,
but also of masculine oppression.
There's a penetrative, violent quality to this symbol
that is all tied up with the way that the man has wronged her.
It's one of the images that Paula identifies with most.
She's actually said that she'd like to be buried with it.
Um, because, I think, in a way,
there's almost a sense in which it's self-portraiture,
that this is a culmination of so many of the themes and ideas
that she explores in other works.
But it's also a very personal image
about the sufferings that she herself experienced
at the hands of men.
I found that a really profound experience.
I feel actually deeply emotionally moved by being
in the company of Paula Rego's art.
There's something about it that has this individual voice,
this quality that speaks to you.
But more broadly, it speaks to me as a woman.
It strikes me that she is so important
because of the time at which she is creating this art.
Portugal, in some ways, at that time,
it was still a repressive place, quite a conservative place,
and certainly a difficult place to be a woman,
particularly a woman artist.
What she does in her art,
it seems to give you that own insight into her life,
what she experienced, what she went through,
but more profoundly,
it forged a new path for women in Portugal going forward.
Today, Lisbon feels as though
it's left the darker days of the 20th century far behind
and there's one artist that I feel encapsulates
that new positive forward-looking spirit.
This is quite exciting, really.
I've come to this very industrial part of the city
and this former warehouse, imposing building, right by the river.
And it's the studio of an artist called Joana Vasconcelos,
and she is probably - of a younger generation than Paula Rego -
the most famous Portuguese contemporary artist working today.
And her work is fascinating because its identity and appearance draws
so explicitly on Portuguese culture,
but at the same time, it speaks to a really international audience.
I'm going to show you how it works, actually. Yeah.
We are working in this. This is a plan by the architects.
I think it's easier. SHE SPEAKS PORTUGUESE
This is the blue arm and here we are working in that patchwork.
But the chandelier...
Vasconcelos is known internationally
for her playful and inviting artworks
that draw on many aspects of traditional Portuguese culture.
She's had major exhibitions all over the world,
and for the 2013 Venice Biennale,
she created a modern version of the Lisbon tile panorama
and mounted it on the exterior of a Tagus ferry boat.
..Yeah, exactly.
So, here, we have the crochet work also.
This is a Portuguese technique done in the central part of Portugal
and it's very complex, and it's disappearing.
Can we have a look at the rooster since we're here? Yes, of course.
I can't quite see how this...works. So, this is the neck.
OK, so, it's on its side. And that's the head. Yeah.
SHE SPEAKS PORTUGUESE
Coming here is incredible because it is vast, this studio!
I mean, it's across several different floors.
How many people do you have working for you?
Around 60. OK. In different teams.
We have different units
and the units are around four people each unit.
I sense that Portuguese culture is throughout your work, the bedrock.
Yes, of course. I always use the traditional aspects of my culture.
That can be as simple as the colour, OK?
So, in this case, I'm using all the fabrics
that I've been collecting through the years,
but using a tone of colour
which is connected with the Portuguese light.
Even walking through the studio...
I mean, there are references to the famous Portuguese cockerel...
Yeah. ..and of course, you work a lot with tiles and ceramics.
Yes. So that's, again, Portuguese elements.
This... It's what surrounds me every day.
There's a way that every country and every culture looks upon, you know,
light, colour and textiles, and, you know, textures,
and how you relate it to the house, to the feminine world.
So, I use all of that from the Portuguese perspective.
You know, you don't have a studio in London, or Paris, or Berlin.
Mm-hm. You are in Portugal, in Lisbon,
and I wonder whether you could talk about
the appeal of the city for you, why you have stayed.
I'm very proud to tell you that I'm from the first generation
ever brought up and educated in democracy in Portugal,
and that gives us a responsibility to look upon our past -
the colonies, the dictatorship, all our history -
and how can we look again into Europe and be part of Europe,
and what can we add to the European environment?
So, I decided to stay and to cope with the country
and to learn from it, and to learn my roots and my traditions.
And, so, the joy of being part of a country that has a strong culture
and amazing light, and amazing weather,
and amazing quality of life, it's a pleasure,
so I'm really happy to be from Portugal and to be able
to live here, and to take that with me through my work.
I'm an optimist by nature
and I really think that the world should be seen
as an optimistic place and not, you know, like,
"Oh, we are in the worst time and la-la-la,"
I think we're living in an amazing time.
Our time in Lisbon is almost over,
but we can't leave this wonderful city
without hearing the music that emerged from these very streets.
FADO MUSIC PLAYS
We've been invited to a very special fado club...
Yeah, this is the place. Fado. Let's go.
..where many of the best musicians in Lisbon
come at the end of the night.
D'you know who's up next?
It's... Apparently, it's...
It is the sister, right, of Amalia Rodrigues,
and she is 94 years old.
Oh, my goodness. This is fado superstar level, isn't it? Totally.
I mean, and we didn't know that she was going to be performing.
This is quite special. In this tiny room! For us!
I know. We are so lucky.
SHE SINGS FADO SONG
It's been a really amazing experience from my point of view.
I have loved every second of my time in Lisbon.
Yeah, I think that's true - for both of us -
and, like, you know, this is genuine.
I suppose what it is, for me, is
it's a European city, it's a capital city,
and yet, it has this different complexion.
It's not a massive city like New York or London.
It's got this character.
But it also has this exotic element that almost makes it feel like
And I think that's partly to do
with the fact that Lisbon has been open to the world - not always.
At various points in its history though,
it really has been looking outwards.
I mean, the Age of Discoveries, what an exciting, intrepid,
adventurous period of its history... Mm.
..bringing in all of those influences and wealth.
This kind of amazing cultural fusion
that completely defines its identity.
Yeah, it feels very much like a paradox, doesn't it?
Because on the one hand you've got this openness,
this awareness of the world and everything that's going on in it,
and, yet, when you look at periods in its history,
like Salazar's regime,
that was all about isolationism, it was about shutting down the borders,
looking after Portugal's interests... Mm.
..and almost investing in a kind of ignorant bliss.
But there's also - I mean, something that I've found - this whole thing of fado.
What we're going to go and see now as a, you know, very fitting end,
is a different side, which is melancholic,
and it's almost like the flip side, for ME... Mm.
..of that whole Age of Discovery thing.
Out go the boats and there's the exciting open world on the oceans.
But at the same time, you kind of want to be back home.
There's a yearning, a sort of nostalgia,
which I think is really beautiful.
SHE SINGS FADO SONG
I think the other thing that's struck me is how strong the sense
of Portuguese identity is.
So, it's one of the earliest countries in Europe
to be defined by its language, its capital and its borders,
and you get that sense that they know EXACTLY who they are.
And I think that that's crucial
maybe for the risks that there could be.
It gets that globalised, hollowed-out feel,
where you walk down a street
and you could be in any great city in the Western world.
And coming here, it's not like that, thank God. No! No.
You know, it really isn't. I think it could hold out.
Shall we go and have some more melancholic yearning...
Yeah. ..inside with the fado?
And finish our delicious drinks. Yeah. It's been great. It's been amazing.
RAP MUSIC PLAYS