Lisbon, the Initiatory Symbolism that Pombal Hid

Lisbon was not merely rebuilt after the 1755 earthquake — it was reinvented. The Pombaline downtown rises like a perfectly geometrical board, but also as an enigma. What seems like Enlightenment rationality can be read as an initiation code: squares that become temples, streets that turn into rites of passage, and façades that discreetly conceal handshakes and symbols belonging to a secret language.

Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, the future Marquês de Pombal, did not live isolated from the world. In London, he mingled with the British aristocracy immersed in the effervescence of speculative Freemasonry after 1717. In Vienna, as Braga Gonçalves recalls in The Freemason of Vienna, he attended salons where diplomats, musicians, and thinkers exchanged Enlightenment ideas in discreet social settings. It is no coincidence that Mozart, initiated in 1784, inscribed Freemasonry in his Magic Flute — reflecting the same cultural atmosphere surrounding the circle in which Pombal moved.

Carlos Mardel, the Hungarian engineer who designed part of reconstructed Lisbon, is another essential piece of this mosaic. A foreigner trained in the heart of Central Europe, he was close to Masonic circles and brought technical knowledge fused with a symbolic vision of space. His mark, combined with Pombal’s reformist spirit, gave rise to a city that is simultaneously modern and initiatory.

Today, when crossing Praça do Comércio, passing under the Rua Augusta Arch, or observing the subtle reliefs on façades, it is possible to glimpse signs: handshakes echoing fraternity rituals, watchful eyes, compass and square discreetly inscribed as ornamentation. For some, mere decorative whims; for others, evidence of the symbolism that Pombal concealed under stone and lime.

Lisbon thus became more than a rebuilt capital. It is an open book of symbols, an initiatory space where rationality and mystery intertwine. Those who walk through the downtown unaware see streets; those who know the hidden language cross a temple.

Paulo Freitas do Amaral, Historian and Author