Alfama (at night)

Ever since I strolled around the Castle District near Buda Castle in Budapest, I fell in love with the “castle districts” of cities. The towns surrounding palaces contain so much character – echoes of the working class from medieval times floating through narrow streets. Whether it is a town under the shadow of a great Inca Emperor’s stone palace or the musty streets turned brown from the dust risen by elephants under Rajasthani fortresses, the memory of a kingdom is well preserved in the neighborhoods surrounding the castle’s ruins.

We visited Alfama, the oldest part of Lisbon and the “castle district” of Sao Jorge Castle, once at night-time and once during the day. It’s hard to tell which one was better. Night: empty, no crowd – Day: stunning red-roof, turquoise-water, yellow-trolley colors – Night: sparkling city lights and mournful fado softly passing through streets – Day: the possibility of seeing peacocks. Night was romantic warmth, day was passionately ablaze.

When we visited at night, we started at the miradouro, the name given to many of the stunning viewpoints in Lisbon. Google translate says that miradouro means belvedere, which I had to look up because belvedere seems very antique and romantic and fairy-tale like. I think its fitting that miradouro translates to something more beautiful than just “viewpoint”, because Lisbon, a city on hills, is laced by these gorgeous belvederes in even the most secretive of places.

At nighttime, we could see “the Golden Gate bridge” (25 de Abril bridge) all lit up. Muted yellows and oranges glistened across the calm river – the was like a dull mirror, softly reflecting the sky. One of my favorite parts of the day is “The Blue Hour” – when the sky is a dark, rich blue. The color servers as a perfect contrast to everything else, simultaneously illuminating the golden lights and emboldening the shadowed parts of the city. “The Blue Hour” is my favorite time to photograph – and something about the golden grandeur of European cities makes my photographs of Budapest, London, Vienna, Paris, Reykjavik, and now, Lisbon, my best photographs yet.

We stumbled around the castle ruins for some time. The sound of peacocks creepily echoed through the night, but amongst the eery shadows and ghostly shaped stones, they sounded like goblins. or bats. or thestrals? 🙂

There was a beautiful museum with relics from the Moorish time. It was crazy to read medieval Arabic on slabs of stone all the way in Portugal. It really put some perspective on the different empires that have played a part in the world’s fabric of history. Quranic verses and lists of food and descriptions of the king – all engraved in a completely different script that Portugal uses today. In fact, Alfama comes from Al-Hamma, Arabic meaning “hot baths”, and existed even during Roman times. In fact, Lisbon is older than Rome! 

 

After exiting the museum, we crossed a moat-like structure into the castle grounds. At night time everything was grainy and yellow, light honey-colored night vision. It was hard to really tell where we were, and after a dizzying roam through the fortress grounds we exited the castle.

Sitting outside the gate, I was in awe of the tiny corridors. They were straight out of the movie The Grand Budapest hotel – dim corridors a lit by a source of light you couldn’t see. Blue tiles glistening in a confectionary glaze, and short doors with large numbers and small windows symmetrically lined the cobble-stone streets. It was quiet, no source of movement except the faint swish of something in the shadows and a female voice singing in broken fragments somewhere far away. I followed a dark blue sign into a corridor but it kept going on, and on, and on – I was by myself, and perhaps I should have been braver – it’s a safe city, anyways – but narrow mazes of ancient corridors with such tangible relics and stones and walls and doors and pieces from centuries ago can certainly make you feel as if you are part of a different era altogether. What dim ghost, what translucent shimmering pale woman singing from years past was following me? I quickly turned back 🙂

Walking back down to the metro, the music got louder and showed itself to be a blend of multiple fado restaurants, loud cheering when the floating melody nostalgically ended. We ate at bright-lit restaurant on a dark, shadowy square – portraits of famous people decorating the walls. I ordered rabbit for the first time – I’m not really one adventurous with trying new meat, but I felt so stuck in a past time that eating rabbit felt more like a scene in a dream. Not a nightmare, not a bright, happy dream – but a memory-like dream, the haze of history clouding the blackness of the night, soft-edges corners and subtle color changes in the oldest neighborhood of Lisbon.