Creative Portugal

 

Roland and I just returned from a trip to Portugal, Spain, and Morocco. The three countries have a lot of similarities, but they are also different. In these next three blog posts, I am going to highlight one of the major characteristics of each.

We began our trip with several days in Porto, Portugal on our own, with a break for a full-day cruise up the Douro River, before joining our tour group in Lisbon.

Portugal was crammed with reminders of how creative its population was (and is). To start with their artistic achievements, notice the photo at the top of this page, which shows a doorway inside the Porto cathedral. The cathedral is filled with blue tile art, and the next photo is one of many examples from the interior walls.

It isn’t just interiors that show the country’s artistic bent, however. The cathedral also has blue tiles on an exterior porch. Unfortunately, that side is undergoing reconstruction and doesn’t appear in the next photo. The Carno Church also has an exterior wall filled with blue tile art, however, and that’s the following picture.

These are examples of art created centuries ago, but not all of Portugal’s public art comes from the distant past. For example, the sidewalks of Lisbon are decorated at intervals with different black mosaic pictures. This next photo shows a tribute to the men who imbed those pictures into the sidewalks, and it consists of a sidewalk picture as well as the figures of two men doing the work.

Art isn’t the only source of creativity, however. Science can be creative, too. Just think of inventors such as Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. Then there were the 15th-century accomplishments of Portugal’s Prince Henry, better known these days as Prince Henry the Navigator. Contrary to that designation, he wasn’t an explorer and never navigated the seas, but his sponsorship was responsible for making the explorers’ lives easier. He hired cartographers to map the oceans and men of various callings to develop the caravel, a sailing ship that could use square sails as well as triangular ones, making it easier to maneuver and less dependent on currents and trade winds. Magellan, Columbus, and subsequent explorers all benefited from the work done under his sponsorship.

The next photo is a maritime monument in Lisbon. You can see Prince Henry in front leading the way, with the other explorers following him.

I’ll end this post with some general images of the Portugal we experienced. The first are pictures of streets in Porto and Lisbon, respectively; the third was taken during our cruise on the Douro River; the fourth is a picture of Porto and the river from the top of the distinctive Don Luis I bridge; and the final one shows the bridge and the monastery at one end of it all lit up at night.

Portugal was my favorite country on the trip, but there was more to come. Stay tuned next week to read about historic Spain.