Thursday 28 November 2013

Portugal: Elevador de Santa Justa

This was just round the corner from our hotel. It doesn't really lean - that's my dodgy camera work. It was a weird-looking thing that reminded Tutty and me of the Eiffel Tower and we had to have a rummage through the guide book to discover what it was, exactly.
Turns out it was designed by a student of Eiffel's, Raoul Mesnier du Pontard, and is one of several that were built around 1900. Lisbon has some horribly steep hills so they took to building lifts in the street to save people walking up them. Genius. I'm guessing it was so that people could get to this church more easily...


We had a free ticket to this included in (I think) our open-top bus tour ticket, and at least one of the days we were there was beautifully sunny and blue skied, so we queued up to partake of the views. It was very popular.



The views made it clear why. This is Rossio Square, which was the next square over from where our hotel was.




I make no apology for the number of pictures in this post.




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