Salgueiro Maia, a key player and a Carnation Revolution hero for many, led a mechanised cavalry column into Lisboa, aimed at taking key targets and capturing the government members. His role in the negotiations was critical for the peaceful outcome of the Revolution.

The Capitolino, a citadel hill heavily connected to the myths that populate the origins of Rome, was the building ground to several temples, including a major temple to Jupiter. Nowadays, the post-medieval palazzi dominate the hill, with the overwhelming Michelangelo’s Piazza del Campidoglio in center stage.

The plan of the villa evolved as did Hadrian himself. Many of the places were named and built after Greek and Egyptian deities and influences Hadrian interested himself with, and the several additions to the villa reflected the eclectic life, love and travels of the emperor.

A teacher once told me there are two cities in the world that an architect needs to visit in his lifetime: New York and Rome. I had visited neither by the time I became an architect. Only when I wasn’t an architect anymore, did I get the chance to visit both.

For the second year, the cultural non-profit AIAR, ADC and the Raia Urban Sketchers chapter, held Traço 17 – the Alentejo Drawing Festival, in the imposing Graça fortress, overlooking Elvas.

The reasons to visit the old concentration camps are probably manyfold, as are, undoubtedly the reasons for not visiting them. But it’s only after visiting them that the reason becomes apparent. It’s a leap of faith to comprehend the human experience on Earth.

Lisboa City Hall is promoting an activity amongst the Portuguese Urban Sketchers community that focuses on a list of 19th to 20th century threatened buildings. The aim is to attract attention to these buildings, alerting the civil society about the dangers of letting these gems perish.

Kraków is definitively more touristy than Warszawa. The medieval town’s survival during WWII made it possible for the city to skip the soviet-style modernist renovation and helped preserve the atmosphere of a historical European city, with all the layers of the preceding epochs in plain view.

A strange and sunny day had hit the city when Pedro Alves and I decided it was time to face the mighty challenge of sketching the crown jewel of Roque Gameiro’s portfolio.

This old 16th century portal in the edge of the old town of Lisboa, in the area called Mouraria, aparently hides architectural and artistic treasures inside its doors.

From the Alto da Cotovia, many stories have rolled down the hill – a cleptomaniac arsonist, doomed construction sites, an underground water reservoir that still exists to this date, with an unconspicuous underground path to São Pedro de Alcântara and branching out in all directions of the hill of the Jesuits.

In Largo da Achada you can find one of the dozens of casas de ressalto existing in the city. These are residential buildings, mostly hailing from the 15th century, with overhanging timber-framed floors, leaning over streets and alleys. A clever way of expanding your real estate, which finds its counterpart in the modern marquises. Clever, but dangerous.

Lisboa has become a city of street art ever since the Carnation Revolution brought with it thousands of political murals in 1974, right down to the international street art stars Vhils (Artsy link here) and Bordalo II. Many corners and alleys, streets and squares in the old town of Lisboa became showcases for this artform