From Rossio to the Castle: Lisbon in Four Stops

Lisbon tells its story uphill. Down in the flat Baixa you walk through a city rebuilt from scratch after the earthquake of 1755; climb a few streets and you are among stones laid by Romans, Moors and the first Portuguese kings.

This short walk links four of the city's best-known places in that order: a lively square, a grand riverside stage, the city's oldest church and the hilltop castle where Lisbon began. It is a good first afternoon, and it ends with the view that explains the rest.

Officially it is Dom Pedro IV Square, but almost nobody calls it that: to Lisbon it has always been Rossio. A tall column with King Pedro IV on top rises between two bronze fountains brought from France in the 19th century.

Look north. The neoclassical Dona Maria II National Theatre was built in the 1840s on the site of the Inquisition's palace, which burned in 1836. Off the square's northwest corner, Rossio railway station hides behind a neo-Manueline façade of carved horseshoe doorways.

The streets south of Rossio run in a strict grid, the plan used to rebuild the Baixa after 1755. They end at Comércio Square, open to the Tagus on one side.

Before the earthquake this was Terreiro do Paço, the yard of the Ribeira Palace, the royal residence that the disaster destroyed. Lisbon kept the old name in daily speech and gave the new square to trade. In the middle, King José I rides a bronze horse, the work of Joaquim Machado de Castro, unveiled in 1775. Behind him, the triumphal arch of Rua Augusta frames the way you came.

A short climb east brings you to Lisbon Cathedral, the Sé. It was begun in 1147, just after Christian forces took the city, on the site of Lisbon's main mosque. The first building was Romanesque, and it still sets the tone of the church today.

The earthquake brought down the Gothic main chapel and much of the cloister, so the inside mixes periods. In the cloister, excavations that began in 1990 uncovered a Roman street with shops, Visigothic buildings and remains of the mosque: much of Lisbon's history in one hole in the ground.

Keep climbing and you reach the hilltop where the city began. The walls of São Jorge Castle go back to the Moors, who fortified the hill in the 10th century. In 1147 Afonso Henriques, Portugal's first king, took it with the help of crusaders from northern Europe.

Kings later made it their palace; it was here that Manuel I received Vasco da Gama in 1498. Today you can walk the walls and towers, and the terrace gives a wide view over the Baixa you walked through and the river beyond. In the Tower of Ulysses, a camera obscura gives a 360-degree view of the city and the Tagus.

In two hours you have walked through Lisbon's history in reverse: from the 19th-century square and the grid rebuilt after 1755, to a cathedral of the first Portuguese kings, and finally to the Moorish walls on the hill. From the castle terrace you can see the whole walk at once.