A neighborhood with no name
Fun with maps!
Back when we started looking for an apartment to buy, our wonderful real estate agent, Heather, told of a place that had just come on the market and she thought there would be a good chance it would be priced a little low. Groovy! we said. Bring it on! Where is it? Pena she said. …… we said. Pena? Um, where is that? She kind of mapped it out for us. Turned out it was an area we had walked and liked it. We loved the apartment and the neighborhood, and we moved. All was grand.
And then people starting asking: Where is this apartment? What area are you near?
Umm...
Turns out, we’re not really in Pena. We’re just past it. No problem, right? We can just say we’re near Pena. Awesome! Turns out, no one has heard of Pena. Plus, there’s a famous Pena Palace1 in Sintra, a major tourist destination about an hour away, so people kept saying, “You live in Sintra?”
Lisboa is made up of many neighborhoods. More than we can shake a stick at, let alone name. Some are tiny, and some pretty big. Unlike in many cities, we have yet to find a complete map of Lisboa’s neighborhoods.
We thought, ok, we can at least use our freguesia. Wait, what’s that you ask? What is a freguesia? And Lisboa? I thought you moved to Lisbon! Yeah, those were confusing for us as well.
The name of the city is pretty easy: Lisboa is Portuguese for Lisbon. Wait, is it that simple? Because when we order something online or have to fill out a form, under District the autofill says Lisbon and under Postal Zone it says Lisboa. Continental Portugal is divided into 18 districts, one of which is Lisbon. Within it is the municipality of Lisboa, the capital city of Portugal.2
The municipality of Lisboa is further divided into freguesias. In 2012 the city condensed the number of freguesias from 53(!) to 24. The smallest is Santo António, clocking in at 1.49 km2 / .58 miles2. That’s where we lived in our first apartment. The largest is Bélem at 10.43 km2 / 4 miles2.
For those curious, a freguesia is a civil parish. It’s the lowest administrative district. They are responsible for all sorts of things - cleaning the streets and sidewalks, hosting festivals, picking up the trash, putting up flyers with lists of events, give out dog licenses, and sooo much more.3
When it was time to answer the now-dreaded question: what area do you live in?, we turned first to what is our freguesia. It used to be Santo António. We lived pretty much on the western edge of it. Turns out we now live hard up against the eastern edge. Not as helpful as we’d hoped.
Another popular way to say where we live is to give the name of the closest metro stops. Our Rua do Salitre apartment was between Rato (mouse) and Avenida (Avenida da Liberdade). Now our closest station is …. Avenida. Hmmm.
So we hunted online and quizzed people we know: Where do we live? We got back a fair amount of umm…. No one fessed up to knowing what to call our new neighborhood.
Fine, we said, what’s the nearest tourist destination? Well, we’ve got a hospital (with the longest name ever). There’s the Jardim do Torel. And the Campo dos Martires da Patria. Neither of those parks are well known. After that… gosh. Nothing. Not a tourist destination in sight.
What we’ve started saying is that we live nearish to Avenida metro station. The problem with that is Avenida metro station is on Avenida da Liberdade. Kind of our version of Rodeo Drive. To name a few of the stores there: Armani, Cartier, Gucci, Louis Vitton, Versace and so on. The area is scenic and full of tourists – especially the high end ones – and people doing fashion photography.4 Saying Avenida station gives a certain feeling to who we are that is false in every way.
We’ve taken to saying that “You know where Avenida station is? Go up the hill. No, not the hill towards where we lived near the neighborhood Principe Real (the poshest neighborhood in all of Lisbon).” It’s long and unwieldy, confusing, and doesn’t really say where we live.
Scott was out walking Josie the other day when he bumped into his Portuguese professor. Turns out she lives around the corner from us. She doesn’t have a good name for this neighborhood, either. Oy.
Hopefully we come up with something snappy and can stop fumbling when the most basic of questions - Where do you live? - is asked.
That’s all for now.
Love from Lisbon,
Amy & Scott
https://www.parquesdesintra.pt/pt/parques-monumentos/parque-e-palacio-nacional-da-pena/
Better explanations are welcome by more knowledgeable readers!
Plus, we’ve seen it reversed on one map. So who knonws?
https://lisboaacolhe.pt/cidadania-e-participacao/freguesias/
Amy in particular has witnessed multiple photo shoots making use of the scenic locaton.
The area between Estefania and Avenida Liberdade, north of Lavra and just down from Campo Martires da Patria is always a mystery :)
Hi, Native from Lisbon here. If you live in Rua do Passadiço, you will need a "periphrasis of location" (just invented the expression) to explain where you live to a Lisboa inhabitant (who knows the city well enough). So... it would be «Atrás dos Capuchos» or «Entre os Capuchos e a Avenida da Liberdade». Then, as the person would look at you with a confused look, you would be more precise: «Sabes (o Hospital d)os Capuchos?» (puzzled look) «... o Campo dos Mártires da Pátria?» (a bit less puzzled look). «Fica aí, atrás dos Capuchos, a descer para a Av. da Liberdade...» Finally the person would say (geographically defeated): «Ok...». To a foreigner or to a tourist or to someone who doesn't know Lisboa well, try the "periphrasis of location" (just for some fun), explain that it is a secret, quiet place quite near the Avenida da Liberdade, then smile intriguingly and forget about it.