Sé de Lisboa

Between Alfama and the Baixa, Lisbon Cathedral seems to gather whole centuries of the city into a single building. Construction began in 1147, just after the Christian conquest of Lisbon, and the Romanesque church changed over time with the same upheavals that shaped the capital itself. To the Gothic cloister commissioned by King Dinis was added, in the fourteenth century, the ambulatory chevet ordered by Afonso IV to receive pilgrims coming to venerate the relics of Saint Vincent, a rare solution that still sets the cathedral apart. The 1755 earthquake destroyed important parts of the complex, and the restorations of the twentieth century gave it the Neo-Romanesque appearance we know today, with the rose window and twin towers dominating the square. Inside, medieval stone lives alongside traces of other periods; and in the baptistry, one is reminded that Saint Anthony was baptised here, a detail that links the Sé not only to Lisbon’s history, but also to its most intimate devotion.