MARINA TAVARES DIAS 

has been writing about Lisbon for decades.

 She reveals her “quiet little paradises”.

Oriana Alves (interview, 2008)

It was Alis Ubbo to the Phoenicians, Olissipo to the Romans, Al-Ushbuna to the Arabs and Lisboa to the Portuguese. Today it belongs to everyone, and everyone can gaze upon its splendour from the viewpoint at Nossa Senhora do Monte and at the light, refracted by the river, which illuminates its hills and houses. Not everyone, though, can imagine the soldiers of King Dom Afonso Henriques stationed here, looking down on the Moorish settlement before they conquered the city in 1147. Nor can expectant mothers, seated on the chair of São Gens as the old custom dictates, in the corner of this hillside chapel, imagine their Roman ancestors, 1,700 years before, searching for that same marble seat in the hope of a safe birth. Such historical curiosities run through the books of ‘Lisbonographer’ Marina Tavares Dias.

Our odyssey begins with lunch at the Trindade, the oldest and most beautiful beer hall in Lisbon. Nearby is the Bairro Alto, the bohemian heart of the city and home to the Portugal’s national newspapers from the 19th century until 20 years ago. This restaurant has, long been the scene of glorious lunches and leisurely conversations stretching well into the afternoon. Marina is no exception. As a cultural correspondent from 1984 to 1990, first on the Diário Popular and then on Diário de Lisboa, it was here that she interviewed such figures as fado singer Amália Rodrigues and film director António Lopes Ribeiro.

“I decided to be a journalist at the age of 12, after visiting O Século. I had never seen anything so wonderful. As there were no courses in Portugal, I went to England after high school to do communication studies, and worked as an au pair. When I returned, I knocked on many a door trying to sell my articles.” She did six years of work placements without pay. “I’d been at the Diário Popular two years before I got my first salary.”

Even so, the trainee got to know many of the city’s characters, such as Cabeça de Vaca (Cowhead), a surreal figure of humble origins but highly cultured and famous for never having done a day’s work in his life (not counting the canvases he painted as a youth). He lived a bohemian life and always got the Bairro Alto’s regular diners to share their meals with him. He died at the counter here, a glass of beer in his hand. In the Trindade, people still drink his health.

Hotel life

Marina is a good storyteller. In her days at Diário Popular, where she also wrote a column on Lisbon life, readers would drop in to share their memories. From football to Fernando Pessoa, King Dom Carlos to picture postcards, Marina seems to have uncovered all the mysteries of Lisbon in the thirty or so books she has published, several bestsellers. But in fact, she says “the history of this city is being made every day”.

And so it was that afternoon. We are not going down the steps of the Escadinhas do Duque, which link the Chiado area with Rossio to visit a record shop and some antiquarian booksellers. It is time to pick up her 12-year-old daughter, Francisca, from school, drop by her house to change her bag for a suitcase and check in to the hotel before returning to the Bairro Alto. They are good company and a night in a hotel is one of their regular arrangements. From the window of the Hotel Tivoli, on the Avenida da Liberdade, you look down on the Parque Mayer, the old entertainment district where several variety theatres were built, including the Maria Vitória, the only one still open. The area’s heyday was in 1930s, 40s and 50s, when Beatriz Costa was the queen of Portuguese cinema and lived at the Tivoli during the last three decades of her life.

From the same window you can see the Anjos district, where Dias lives, and it’s possible to locate the former Armazéns de Santa Marta, an important commercial establishment run by her maternal grandfather. In the opposite direction is the Baixa, where her paternal grandfather had an import-export office, similar to the ones where Fernando Pessoa worked as a translator, earning him enough for the rent and time to dedicate himself to writing. Her grandfather would often come across the poet in the Café Martinho do Rossio.

This was the meeting point for the Orpheus Generation, the group responsible for introducing modernism to Portugal, which “gave public taste a slap in the face”, in the words of one of its most prominent members, Almada Negreiros, paraphrasing Mayakovsky. It is not surprising that – according to her grandfather – the athletes of the Atheneum Football Club arranged to administer a thrashing to these effeminate artists who were staining the honour of Portuguese youth, a confrontation which did not in fact come to pass.

But it her maternal grandfather’s stories that Marina remembers best, such was his gift for oratory. One concerned the tragic premature death of the fado singer Júlia Mendes from pneumonia in 1910. Several people were responsible for the fado dedicated to her: “Oh Julia/ It’s late/ Be careful/ Wrap your shawl around you/ Because the night is cold/ Oh Julia/ You have the night in your soul/ Keep calm/ Or you may lose your way.” Tonight it is the voice of singer Ivani we hear in the restaurant O Canto do Camões in the Bairro Alto.

Homage to the tram

After an early breakfast, we ascend to Nossa Senhora do Monte, in the Graça district, and then make our way down to the Feira da Ladra, the famous flea market. “I bought my first antique postcard of Lisbon here when I was eight. My grandfather said: here’s two bob. If you’re smart about it, by midday you’ll have made a pound”. The tradesman’s advice to the future Lisbonographer did not produce the intended result, but this spot has been the subject of one of Marina’s books and started off her picture archive which now runs to hundreds of thousands of images. “At first I had everything in files, but now I’ve lost count. I pick up a jacket and photos fall out. As a rule I can lay my hands on what I want, but my dream is to create the Marina Tavares Dias Archive, fully accessible to the public.”

We enter the monastery of St. Vicente de Fora, the most important piece of late 16th century Portuguese architecture. We cross the pale cloisters lined with tiles. In the Pantheon of the House of Bragança lies Queen Dona Estefânia, one of Marina’s little treasures, and from the top of the bell tower you get the best view of the city.

Outside, Marina pays homage to the Yellow Tram with a visit to the Transport Museum at Santo Amaro station. “When I was 13 and 14 I read a lot on the tram. I would go round and round on the No. 23, from Arco do Cego to Poço do Bispo, and back again. I read the entire War and Peace in twelve pocket volumes.” For someone who sees how cars have taken over Lisbon, and cities in general, this affection for the tram is quite comprehensible.

Nevertheless it is in a beige taxi that we make our way to another ‘quiet little paradise”: the Winter Garden of Ajuda Palace. We get back just in time to see the sun set from the viewpoint at São Pedro de Alcântara. Returning to the Bairro Alto, we have dinner at Casanostra, rounding off the day with the best in Italian cuisine to the sound of Frank Sinatra – a final which is not at all Portuguese, but 100% Lisbon.

Wise women

The gift that follows is a warm autumn Sunday, which we spend in the gardens of National Museum of Ancient Art. The hours pass without our realising, lingering over the early Flemish, the mysterious “Panels of St Vincent”, the childlike features of the paintings of Josefa d’Óbidos, the inimitable Hieronymus Bosch and the fabulous world of sacred art. “In the Middle Ages, it was the saints that illiterate people identified with. My favourites are the legendary ones that appeared to Joan of Arc: Saint Margaret, Saint Barbara and Saint Catherine, the protector of the studious. The old saints were anything but simple women, they were soldiers of Christ, wise women who were swallowed up by the Catholic universe.»

Opposite the church of Saint Catherine, on the Calçada do Combro, is the antiquarian bookseller which we will visit after lunch in the museum gardens with its view over the Tagus. She introduces us to this curiosity shop, where old advertising posters mingle with bronze clocks, dolls and bone china in a huge collection, amassed over twenty years. Those would burn a hole in your pocket, says Marina, who already has a cabinet full of wise saints and another of dolls, and she doesn’t even consider herself a real collector. But if she was, what would she collect? “Quotations”, she replies.