Estação do Rossio

Rossio Station does something rare: it turns a train arrival into a memorable first meeting with Lisbon. Opened in 1890 to serve as the city’s Central Station, it was designed by José Luís Monteiro in the Neo-Manueline style, and one look at the façade explains why: carved arches, lace-like stonework, armillary spheres, sculpture and the clock tower give the building the solemnity of an urban palace. Yet its beauty is not only decorative. The station solved the site’s steep difference in level with great ingenuity and connects to Campolide through a tunnel more than two and a half kilometres long, a decisive work of nineteenth-century railway engineering. It is worth stepping inside and looking up at the iron-and-glass structure above the platforms, or seeking out the famous Sala do Rei. Few places show so clearly that, in Lisbon, even departure can carry grandeur, memory and imagination.