Reservatório da Mãe d'Água das Amoreiras

This guide to the Mãe d'Água cistern in Lisbon follows an obsession that took nearly a century to finish: King João the Fifth's seventeen thirty-one aqueduct project, the earthquake of seventeen fifty-five that left it standing while the city burned, and the two architects, Carlos Mardel and his successor, who both died before this final chamber was complete. It traces the delays between the water's arrival at the arches in seventeen forty-eight and the cistern's eventual inauguration decades later. Stand at the center of the vaulted room and listen for how long it kept people waiting.