- 2 days ago
Follow the story of Lisbon from the moment crusaders took it from the Moors in 1147 to the catastrophic earthquake that nearly erased it in 1755.
Using AI reconstruction tools based on historical paintings, engravings and records, we walk through the city across six centuries — the medieval streets, the age of discovery, the palace on the river, and the morning everything changed.
This is the city that once stood at the centre of the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adxoFilG2rI
Using AI reconstruction tools based on historical paintings, engravings and records, we walk through the city across six centuries — the medieval streets, the age of discovery, the palace on the river, and the morning everything changed.
This is the city that once stood at the centre of the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adxoFilG2rI
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00:04Jerusalem, that was the destination.
00:09Ships from England, Flanders, Germany.
00:13Hundreds of them.
00:15This was the second crusade.
00:18Then the weather changed.
00:21The fleet was blown off course onto the Portuguese coast.
00:29Storm battled, behind schedule.
00:31They dropped anchor and waited.
00:36That's when he appeared.
00:38A man who called himself king, though Rome hadn't confirmed it yet.
00:42He rode to meet them on the shore.
00:45He had a proposal.
00:49Help me take a Muslim city to the south.
00:53Everything inside the walls.
00:55The goods, the prisoners, the plunder is yours.
01:00The Crusaders argued for days.
01:02Jerusalem was the mission.
01:04The spoils are waiting for us.
01:07Forget the city.
01:09We must head toward our true goal, Jerusalem.
01:12But in the end, they said yes to the king.
01:16Three days down the coast until the river appeared.
01:20Wide.
01:20Slow.
01:21And above it, Aluxpuna.
01:24They were now in Lisbon.
01:27My name is Matt.
01:28And I used modern AI tools to reconstruct Lisbon.
01:33All based on historical paintings and records.
01:38The story of a Christian city.
01:40From its very first days.
01:43To that fateful day that changed everything.
01:52This is what the city saw from the walls.
01:56A siege tower taller than the battlements.
01:59Ships blocking the river.
02:01Thousands of men who had been waiting and sieging for four months.
02:06The city had been called Aluxpuna for over 400 years.
02:11The walls broke.
02:12The gates opened.
02:14The terms said the Muslims could leave with their lives.
02:17Some did.
02:19Those who stayed were pushed outside the walls.
02:22Into a neighborhood called Moraria.
02:25The Moorish Quarter.
02:27It still exists today.
02:31The city had a new name now.
02:33Lisbon.
02:36One hundred and eight years later.
02:38It would become the capital of a nation.
02:42But first it had to survive.
02:48The last king of the founding dynasty died without a son.
02:54Only a daughter.
02:55Beatrice.
02:58She was married to Juan I of Castile.
03:01And Juan decided that made him king of Portugal.
03:05The Castilian king shall be our sovereign.
03:07Then it is settled.
03:08Most of the Portuguese nobility agreed with him.
03:12The merchants of Lisbon did not.
03:15They backed a different man.
03:17João.
03:18An illegitimate son of the old royal blood.
03:24No formal claim.
03:26Just the city behind him.
03:29Juan came for Lisbon with everything he had.
03:32His army surrounded the walls.
03:34His fleet stretched a chain across the Tagus.
03:37Nothing got in.
03:39Nothing got out.
03:41Inside, starvation.
03:45Outside, 20,000 men who weren't going anywhere.
03:51Then the Black Death arrived in the Castilian camp.
03:58Juan watched his army rot around him.
04:03Commander after commander dead.
04:07His own wife, Beatrice.
04:09The woman whose crown this was all for.
04:11Struck down by plague in the siege camp.
04:16He burned his tents and retreated.
04:19The city had not won.
04:22It had simply outlasted.
04:26João of Aviz was crowned king the following year.
04:30His house, the House of Aviz,
04:33would rule Portugal for two centuries.
04:37And it was under the Aviz kings
04:39that Lisbon would become something the world had never seen.
04:47The Portuguese kings had been trying to reach India for 80 years.
04:52The man the king finally chose to finish the job was Vasco da Gama.
04:57This is the shore at Belem.
04:59This is the morning he left.
05:03Four ships.
05:04His brother, Paolo, commanding the second.
05:08170 men.
05:10A city that came to watch.
05:12Clergy, nobles, women, children.
05:16Nobody on that beach knew who would come back.
05:24He was sailing into water that had no European name.
05:29Toward a destination nobody from this shore had ever reached by sea.
05:37On a route that existed only in theory.
05:44The ships pushed out into the Taegus and turned south.
05:52Da Gama came back two years later.
05:56Then another fleet left.
05:59Then another.
06:01Then another.
06:03Within a decade, Lisbon controlled the entire spice route from India to Europe.
06:10The Venetians, who had monopolized that trade for centuries, were now buying their pepper in Lisbon.
06:17The city doubled in size.
06:20Then doubled again.
06:22Nearly 200,000 people.
06:25One in ten of them African.
06:30Then they found Brazil.
06:33The money built churches, palaces, monasteries.
06:37An entirely new architectural style.
06:41Stone carved with ropes and anchors and exotic creatures from the edges of the known world.
06:46Empire written in limestone.
06:50Lisbon had been a medieval city on the edge of Europe.
06:53Now it was the center of everything.
06:58This is Lisbon in 1505.
07:04Seven years after Da Gama came back.
07:07The spice money is arriving.
07:10The king is planning the monastery.
07:12And yet, look at the city.
07:15Still the castle on the hill.
07:17Still the medieval walls zig-zagging down the slope.
07:21Dense white buildings packed onto the hillside.
07:24The same way they had been for centuries.
07:28And there, just below the castle.
07:31The say.
07:32The cathedral.
07:35Built in 1147 on the exact site of the city's main mosque.
07:40The year the Crusaders took Lisbon.
07:45The first thing they built.
07:48Still standing today.
07:52Still the same streets the Crusaders walked into three and a half centuries earlier.
07:59Empires are built faster than cities change.
08:08This is the Shafaris Del Rey.
08:11The king's fountain.
08:12A square on the Lisbon waterfront.
08:15Boats unloading at the quay.
08:18Red-roofed towers.
08:19The city pressing right down to the water's edge.
08:22This is the pavement.
08:24And the crowd.
08:26African men.
08:27Ottoman merchants.
08:28Portuguese nobles.
08:30Soldiers.
08:31Dock workers.
08:31Clergy.
08:32Every nation on earth passing through one square.
08:37A sack of pepper bought in India for two cruzados.
08:40Sold here for 30.
08:43The king of Portugal became the richest monarch in Europe.
08:47The Tagus River had become the centre of the world.
08:50And this is where that world collided every single day.
08:57This is Lisbon from the river, 1572.
09:01The castle still crowning the hill.
09:04The city cascading down to the water.
09:07Thousands of red rooftops.
09:09Ships in every direction.
09:11The king had moved his palace from that hilltop down to the river's edge.
09:15So he could watch the ships arrive.
09:20Inside its tower, he installed the Casa da India.
09:24The entire administration of the empire.
09:28Every trade route.
09:29Every cargo.
09:31Every tax on every sack of spice passing through Lisbon was controlled from that building.
09:39Every ship that passed carried something that made Portugal richer.
09:45The men who made this map called it a flourishing trade centre in Portugal.
09:52They were underselling it.
09:58Every ship coming to Lisbon passed here first.
10:01Cascais, a fishing town on the Atlantic coast.
10:06It sat at the mouth of the Tagus.
10:09The last anchorage before the river.
10:13Big ships would shelter here in rough weather.
10:18Waiting for a fair wind to carry them the final miles to Lisbon.
10:23The gateway to the richest port in the world.
10:29This is the Hieronymus Monastery.
10:33Construction started in 1501.
10:37Three years after Da Gama came back.
10:40It took a hundred years to finish.
10:42The king funded it with a 5% tax on every spice imported from the east.
10:47They called it the Vintena da Pimenta.
10:50The pepper tax.
10:52Every column.
10:53Every vault.
10:55Every inch of carved limestone paid for by the spice trade.
10:59The stone itself is covered in ropes, anchors, coral, sea monsters.
11:07Not decoration.
11:08A statement.
11:09This is what the ocean gave us.
11:13Da Gama is buried inside.
11:15He prayed in the small chapel that stood on this spot the night before he sailed.
11:21He left from this shore.
11:24He came back to it.
11:30And the building that replaced that chapel is the largest monument Portugal ever built to the age he started.
11:41The golden century didn't last.
11:46A king died without heirs.
11:51Spain took the throne.
11:56The Dutch dismantled the spice roots.
12:01The monopoly was gone.
12:04Brazil sent gold where India once sent pepper.
12:08Lisbon was no longer the center of the world.
12:11But it was still magnificent.
12:14And it would stay that way until one fateful day in the 18th century.
12:19But more on that later.
12:27This is the Terreiro do Paso.
12:31The palace square.
12:32The beating heart of Lisbon.
12:37Horses, carriages, merchants, nobles, children, dogs.
12:42The whole city passing through one open square on the river.
12:51Behind it, the Ribera Palace.
12:55Stretching along the Tagus waterfront.
12:58Four stories.
13:00A dome rising above the roof line.
13:04Ships on the river below.
13:06This is what power looked like in 17th century Lisbon.
13:11This square has seen everything.
13:16On April 23rd, 1662, the streets leading here were hung with silks and cloth of gold.
13:24Catherine of Braganza, daughter of the king who threw out the Spanish, walked across this square to board a ship.
13:30She was going to England to marry Charles II.
13:34Her dowry included Bombay and Tangier.
13:38The city lied the streets.
13:42The square filled with soldiers.
13:47Inside the palace, the rooms told a different story.
13:53Gilded ceilings, powdered wigs, Brazilian gold paying for what Peppa once built.
13:59The king washing the feet of the poor once a year in a ceremony that filled the great hall.
14:05Courtiers packed in on tiered benches, watching their monarch perform humility in a room that cost a fortune.
14:12The palace stood for 250 years.
14:17Everything you see here, the square, the facade, the dome, the gilded hall, will be gone in a single morning.
14:29The tower was built between 1514 and 1520.
14:35Its job was to guard the mouth of the Tagus.
14:38Every ship that ever left for India sailed past it.
14:42Every ship that came back, heavy with spice, passed it again coming home.
14:47Fortress, prison, customs post, lighthouse.
14:51It has been all of these things.
14:55Behind it, on the plain, the monastery.
14:59Commissioned by the same king.
15:01Built in the same architectural style, on the same stretch of riverbank.
15:05The royal pantheon of the House of Aviz.
15:09Kings and explorers buried inside.
15:12Monks still living in the long wing to the left.
15:16200 years old and still standing.
15:19Though by now the money had moved on.
15:22Brazilian gold funding baroque churches in the city centre.
15:26Not maintaining manuline stone out here at Belém.
15:31This is Lisbon.
15:33The Belém tower in the water.
15:36The monastery on the plain.
15:37The city stretching across the hills.
15:40The palace on the river.
15:42The castle on the hill.
15:43Quarter of a million people.
15:46600 years of history in one frame.
15:49The crusaders who took this city.
15:51The dynasty that sent ships to India.
15:55The square where a princess left for England.
15:58The gilded halls.
15:59The pepper tacks carved in limestone.
16:03Look at it carefully.
16:04Parts of it still stand.
16:06But the city in this painting, this Lisbon, was about to cease to exist.
16:17November 1st, 1755.
16:20All Saints' Day.
16:23Every church in Lisbon was packed.
16:25Audite voce meim.
16:27Every candle lit.
16:29Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus.
16:33The most religious city in Europe, at prayer.
16:39Populus meus audite.
16:44Time est jam ut areptis.
16:50At 9.40 in the morning, the ground moved.
16:57The epicentre was in the Atlantic Ocean.
17:00200 kilometres offshore.
17:04Magnitude 8.5 to 9.0.
17:06The largest earthquake ever to strike Europe.
17:16The shaking was felt as far away as Finland.
17:22In Lisbon, it lasted up to six minutes.
17:36Fishes five metres wide tore open in the streets.
17:42Buildings that had stood for centuries came down in seconds.
17:50The churches, packed with worshippers, collapsed.
17:57Those who survived ran for the docks.
18:03Open ground, safety.
18:08Then they noticed something strange.
18:11The water in the Tagus was pulling back.
18:15The riverbed appearing.
18:17Mud.
18:18Old shipwrecks.
18:19Lost cargo.
18:21People ran in to grab what they could.
18:2540 minutes after the earthquake, the water came back.
18:29A wall of it.
18:30Funnelled up the Tagus straight into the city.
18:37Two more waves followed.
18:44The fires burned for five days.
18:4930,000 to 40,000 dead.
18:5285% of the city's buildings gone.
18:58The city you have been looking at, gone.
19:04This is what was left.
19:08The cathedral.
19:09Walls still standing.
19:13Roof gone.
19:15The same building that went up the year the Crusaders took this city in 1147.
19:20Built on the site of the main mosque.
19:23600 years of stone, earthquake, renovation, survival.
19:30The south tower collapsed.
19:32The roof of the nave came down.
19:34But the walls held.
19:37It was repaired, rebuilt, and is still standing on that same hill today.
19:44The churches.
19:46Facades intact.
19:48Interiors collapsed.
19:52The buildings that had been packed with worshippers at 9.40 that morning.
19:57Every candle lit for All Saints Day.
20:02The walls that held the congregation in had become the walls that crushed them.
20:12And the palace.
20:15The Ribera Palace.
20:18The shell of it still standing.
20:21Enough of the frame survived to rebuild.
20:26The walls were still standing.
20:30The windows still in their arches.
20:34They demolished it anyway.
20:36In its place, Pombal built a grand open square facing the river.
20:41The Plaza del Comercio.
20:44Construction began in the years after the earthquake.
20:47And was largely complete by the 1770s.
20:51Locals still call it Terero do Paso.
20:54Palace Square.
20:56Even the metro station keeps the old name.
20:59The palace has been gone for 270 years.
21:03The king refused to ever sleep inside a stone building again.
21:06He moved the entire royal court to a tented complex in the hills of Ajuda, outside the city.
21:13He lived there for the rest of his life.
21:16After his death, his daughter Maria I began building a proper palace on the same site.
21:22The Palacio Nacional de Ajuda.
21:25The Palacio Nacional de Ajuda.
21:26It still stands there today.
21:31And across the whole hillside, the same story.
21:38Walls with no roofs.
21:41Facades with no interiors.
21:45Streets buried under metres of debris.
21:49The city still recognisable in its outlines, just hollowed out.
21:54Tens of thousands dead.
21:57The rest living in tents on the hills.
22:00Looking down at what had been their city.
22:02A city of shells.
22:07The earthquake didn't just destroy a city.
22:09It changed how Europe thought.
22:15Voltaire wrote it into Candide.
22:18Kant published three papers on it.
22:21The most religious city in Europe struck on its holiest day.
22:25The philosophers of the Enlightenment couldn't ignore it.
22:30The king's prime minister, Pombal, sent a questionnaire to every parish in the country.
22:36How long did the shaking last?
22:39What buildings stood?
22:40The first scientific survey of an earthquake in history.
22:46He rebuilt Lisbon on a grid with wooden cage structures inside the walls.
22:51The first earthquake-resistant buildings ever constructed.
22:57They tested them by marching troops around scale models to simulate the shaking.
23:05And through all of it, some things survived.
23:09The tower.
23:12The monastery.
23:14The cathedral.
23:16The castle.
23:18Nearly 900 years after the Crusaders took this city,
23:22you can still walk up to those walls today.
23:25The castle.
23:25The castle.
23:26The castle.
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