Maria Rattazzi, an Irish traveller, wrote in 1876: To go up the Tagus from the barra to Lisbon is a spectacular sight, worth the entire journey. Simply wonderful! This was the general impression of those who arrived in Lisbon by boat throughout centuries. We believe that nowadays this sense of wonder is still felt by those who arrive in Lisbon from the Atlantic aboard great cruise ships.

The Tagus has inspired foreign visitors in the past and continues to do so. However, throughout the centuries, it was also the source of sustenance that enabled the growth and prosperity of several settlements along its banks, as well as being their main transportation route. Lisbon has become the city we know today thanks to the Tagus. Without its estuary, it would never have aroused the curiosity of the Phoenicians, the Romans, the Moors and the ancient Portuguese. Had it not been for the Tagus, the desire to venture in search of new worlds would never have come to be.

When Lisbon asserted its maritime presence in the fifteenth century, there was an immediate need to defend the ‘barra’ and the city from pirates and attacks from the sea. D. João II was the first to realize this. He fortified Cascais – where sailing vessels awaited favourable winds and tides to enter the ‘barra’ – and had two towers erected near Lisbon on the southern and northern banks. The monarch’s premature death, however, meant the Torre de S. Vicente de Belém (Tower of S. Vicente in Belém) was only completed during the following reign.

Despite this promising beginning, the systematic defence of the Tagus ‘barra’ would only become a reality after the Restauration (1640), when dozens of forts between Xabregas (currently the ‘Parque das Nações) and Cascais (outside the ‘barra’) were built on the north bank. At that point, the fort of S. Gião (located at S. Julião da Barra on the Carcavelos beach) had already been built during the regency of D. Catarina. It was later expanded during the reign of Filipe II. The latter was also responsible for kick-starting the construction of the tower of S. Lourenço da Cabeça Seca (Bugio, on a small island bordering São Julião) and the Santo António da Barra fort in São João do Estoril. It was here that, centuries later, Oliveira Salazar had a fall-related injury which would eventually force him out of office.

For centuries the Tagus was the main access route to Lisbon. With only two navigable canals and treacherous shallows, the river became particularly dangerous during the winter for those who were unfamiliar with it. Its seemingly peaceful waters caused hundreds of shipwrecks. The fearless fisherman and lifeguard Patrão Joaquim Lopes is said to have saved 53 boats from danger and rescued 300 people from the Tagus in his lifetime in the nineteenth century. His actions earned him the personal gratitude of the King D. Luis as well as several British commendations.

For centuries the Tagus was the main access route to Lisbon. With only two navigable canals and treacherous shallows, the river became particularly dangerous during the winter for those who were unfamiliar with it. Its seemingly peaceful waters caused hundreds of shipwrecks. The fearless fisherman and lifeguard Patrão Joaquim Lopes is said to have saved 53 boats from danger and rescued 300 people from the Tagus in his lifetime in the nineteenth century. His actions earned him the personal gratitude of the King D. Luis as well as several British commendations.

The Tagus was the inescapable backdrop for the arrival and departure of most commercial ventures. However, as far as departures go, some were dictated by necessity. This was the case with the diaspora of hundreds of new Christians who fled the fires of the inquisition during the sixteenth century; the emigrants who left in search of the fortune denied to them at home; even the Portuguese Royal Family who, in 1807, fled the country as a way to preserve their independence from Napoleon’s forces. Let us also not forget the thousands of young men in uniform who, in the sixties and seventies, set off from the docks of Alcântara and Rocha do Conde de Óbidos to defend a waning empire.

The departures during the Second World War, after France fell to the Nazis in 1940 and Lisbon became the only free port of southern Europe, were surely the most redeeming ones. Thousands who fled the Nazi regime, either by boat or by Clipper (the hydroplane that connected Lisbon to New York), finally found their long-awaited freedom. For them, the Tagus represented the end of their struggle and also a farewell to Europe. In the words of the German writer Alfred Doblin: “The ship raised anchor in the darkness of the night. It was slowly turned and towed down the river. As we passed the Centennial Exhibition, it shone bright as in a fairy tale. Its magical brightness was the last image we had of a grief stricken Europe.