Largo do Carmo, 8 to 10. A case study

Abstract

The viewer perspective on an old building can trigger multiple readings, so many times unexpected. Either the particular history of the building, always an unraveling bundle of interventions; its inclusion in an urban set of a specific area of the city; the surprise of discovering the personality of the builder and eventually of the architect; or even the successive destination of the property and its occupants. All these components are combined in the building number 8 to 10 in largo do Carmo. Inserted in Lisbon reconstruction after the 1755 Earthquake, it becomes relevant once we perceive that it is integrated in an entire city quarter and, above all, that the owner and promoter was Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, marquis of Pombal. It is focused, therefore, at the heart of a very particular time of Lisbon and leads us to take into account the private developers in that process, namely, in this case, the political protagonist of that unique moment in the history of Lisbon.