Category: personalities

José Maria Eça de Queirós (1845-1900) was a 19th century Portuguese diplomat and writer. His most famous work, “The Maias“, is considered one of the masterpieces of Portuguese literature. Published in 1888, “The Maias” is a family saga that portrays the decline of the Portuguese aristocracy through the history of the Maia family. The novel…

St Vincent, patron saint of Lisbon, is the main martyr of Hispania (Iberian Peninsula during the Roman Empire). At the beginning of the 4th century, the persecution of Diocletian struck Christian communities with particular cruelty. In this context, Vincent of Zaragoza refused the practices of worshiping traditional deities and, for this reason, he was taken…

Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460) was the 5th son of king João I and Philippa of Lancaster and the one who gathers greater notoriety after 5 centuries. Henrique’s great contribution to history was to have conceived the oceans as the highways that would connect the continents. The first public act of great visibility took place…

Philippa of Lancaster is the only female figure in Monument to Discoveries. Navigation voyages in the 15th and 16th centuries were essentially a male subject, but the authors of the Monument to the Discoveries in Belem also wanted to choose a figure to honor the female universe and they could not have chosen better. Philippa…