Alfama (at day)

Night was romantic warmth, day was passionately ablaze.

I recently posted about the blue hour and gentle mystery of Alfama, Lisbon’s oldest district, at night time. Day is completely different – if there was a place in the world that contained every single shade of color known to man, I would not be surprised if it was in Alfama. Leonid Afremov probably dreams of this part of the city, rainbows probably feel embarrassed, and the sun probably reluctantly leaves each day, saddened to remove the prismatic Picasso-like fantasy of Alfama.

Maybe I’ll start with colors.

Red (crayola maroon) – the rusty doors lining the cobblestone streets, far shorter than me because apparantly people’s average heights were much shorter than they are now, centuries ago in Moorish Iberia?

Orange(crayola sunset-orange) – the roofs of each and every building seen from the many miraduoro’s in Alfama

Yellow(crayola canary) – the peeling paint-colored walls surrounding the castle, layers of history literally falling off the homes

Green(crayola middle green) – the peacocks strutting about the castle grounds, their admittedly grotesque-sounding screeches resounding throughout the neighborhood

Blue(crayola cerulean) – the glittering waters of the river tejo and the Atlantic Ocean that you get peeks of at every corner, between the chain-fences and shattered-glass, reflected on motorcycle mirrors and trolley 28’s windows, the perfect contrast to the saturated warmth radiating from the city center

Purple(crayola orchid) – the hazy dawn and pre-sunset sky, glittering with sparkling humidity, sprinkling the luxurious color across each roof.

Since we saw the castle grounds the night before, we chose to just explore the streets around the castle. The line was long – hundreds of tourists, cameras swinging left and right, waiting to buy tickets into the castle. Street sellers were selling different versions of the same things – watercolors of trolley 28 against Alfama’s colors, clothed fabric fish, and key-chains. It was one big tourist mob, and I was so incredibly grateful we visited the castle the night before!

Even the streets were crowded. The narrow corridors that seemed so spooky the other night felt so cheerful now. The buzzing of chatter replaced the fado, and people of all ages walked around, stopping to take pictures with the short doors and cute trees and dreamy tiles. The miraduoro‘s were packed with people absorbing sunshine and the view. Colors, laughter, bright, warm, spring!

Alfama was the poorer part of Lisbon, filled with fisherman, and we passed by the occasional full fish drying. Laundry was stretched above our heads. Glass green bottles were embedded into the walls, as if at night time, one could place a candle at the end inside their home and it would illuminate on the outside. Lace curtains loosely spread apart behind wooden window frames revealed families sitting around the television.

How lovely, as so many of the world’s historical sites are undergoing destruction and deterioration, that this corner stone of history from the age of the Phoenecians is still kept alive with the music of everyday life!