About Lisbon hills: the never built “aerial avenues”

Abstract

The natural beauty of Lisbon, a city set in an amphitheater, with the houses slipping from the hills to the Tagus River was, over the centuries, one of the most celebrated aspects by travelers who visited the city and left their impression in numerous writings. But if nature was too magnanimous to endow the capital with numerous charms, it proved equally lavish in creating topographical obstacles hampering the flow of people and goods, awakening some citizens to overcome them through some projects of magnificent viaducts or “aerial avenues”. Between 1880 and 1910, in a period in which the city experienced an important urban development due to the plan of the engineer Frederico Ressano Garcia for the “avenidas novas”, several proposals were presented with this purpose, some approved even by the Municipality but none of them had any concretization.