Praça do Município

This guide to Praça do Município in Lisbon centers on the morning of October 5, 1910, when a man named José Relvas stepped onto the balcony of the City Hall above the square, facing a crowd of cheering Lisboetas after two days of fighting had shaken the city. It traces the hours before dawn, when an armistice was struck and the revolutionary commander watched the tide of people in the streets decide which way the military would turn. Look for the marble pillory at the square's center, built after the 1755 earthquake long before that crowd ever gathered around it.