A fire-gutted theater's old corner

A theater opened here and later burned down completely

Just 30 feet from here stood the Teatro Avenida, Lisbon's first real entertainment hall on this avenue. It opened on February 11, 1888, with four wooden doors and a plain iron balcony. For years it was the only theater on the Avenida da Liberdade, and critics who first praised its stage later called it small and cramped. The theater ran for nearly eighty years. On December 13, 1967, fire tore through the building and destroyed it completely. Nothing was rebuilt in its place that carried the old name forward.

In 1383, João Fernandes Andeiro was murdered in Lisbon, long before the Passeio Público or the avenue existed on this ground.

In 1094, Lisbon was captured in what the city's records call the Capture of Lisbon.

In 1151, an earthquake struck Lisbon and killed 1,000 people, centuries before the Passeio Público was laid out.

In 1739, the playwright António José da Silva was executed in Lisbon.

A royal park became a Paris-style boulevard

Before any avenue existed here, this ground was the Passeio Público, a public park laid out in 1764 after the great earthquake destroyed much of Lisbon. The architect Reinaldo Manuel designed it for the Marquis of Pombal, Lisbon's chief minister, who rebuilt the city after the disaster. High walls kept the park for nobles only. In 1821, King João VI ordered the walls torn down and opened the park to everyone. By the 1880s, the city tore up the park itself. Workers graded the valley into a 90-meter-wide boulevard, modeled on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. It opened in 1886, built to carry Lisbon's growth north from the old city center.

In 1817, Manuel Monteiro de Carvalho was executed at Campo dos Mártires da Pátria.

Also in 1817, José Campelo de Miranda was executed at Campo dos Mártires da Pátria.

A prize-winning mansion became Spain's embassy

A short walk from the theater's ruins, the Italian architect Nicola Bigaglia built the Palacete Mayer for Adolfo de Lima Mayer, finished around 1899. The building won the city's first Valmor Prize in 1902, an award for Lisbon's best new architecture. Bigaglia gave his share of the prize money back to the city council for public works. Spain later bought the mansion and turned it into its embassy in Portugal, which it remains.

Political killings struck the avenue and the city

The avenue and the city around it saw a string of political killings in the early twentieth century. In 1908, King Carlos I of Portugal and his son, Luís Filipe, Prince Royal of Portugal, were shot dead in Lisbon, along with Alfredo Luís da Costa and the gunman, Manuel Buíça. A decade later, in 1918, President Sidónio Pais was murdered in the city. Three years after that, in 1921, former prime minister António Granjo was killed during a period of political violence that also claimed Jorge Perestrelo de Velosa Camacho in 1919.

An earthquake near Lisbon killed thirty people

In 1909, an earthquake struck the Ribatejo region near Lisbon, centered on the town of Benavente, and killed 30 people. It came little more than a century after a smaller Lisbon earthquake in 1807 that killed 11. Both were minor compared to the earthquakes of 1531 and 1551, which the city's own records blame for 30,000 and 2,000 deaths respectively, long before the avenue was ever planned.

A war monument honored Portugal's fallen soldiers

Near the Teatro Avenida's corner, workers raised the Monument to the Fallen in the Great War to honor Portuguese soldiers killed in World War I. A national commission started planning it in 1920. President António José de Almeida laid the first stone in 1923. It took until November 22, 1931, to finish, when President Óscar Carmona unveiled it. The monument shows a robed figure crowning a kneeling soldier with a bronze laurel wreath. Its pedestal carries a line from the poet Augusto Casimiro: "In the service of the Fatherland, the effort of its People."

Old mansions gave way to banks and luxury stores

By the mid-twentieth century, many of the avenue's original mansions started coming down, replaced by office blocks and hotels. The Barata Salgueiro palace, finished in 1902, was demolished in 1970 for a bank headquarters. The pattern repeated along the boulevard for decades. Luxury brands moved in starting in 2004, when Louis Vuitton opened Portugal's first international luxury store here, followed by Prada and Gucci in 2008. Today the avenue carries ten traffic lanes between Restauradores Square and Marquis of Pombal Square, closed to cars on Sundays and holidays since 2022.