Restauradores Square

This guide to Restauradores Square in Lisbon opens on December 1, 1640, with Miguel de Vasconcelos, the most powerful Spaniard in Portugal, crouched in a closet of the nearby Ribeira Palace while forty Portuguese noblemen moved through the building declaring independence after sixty years of Spanish rule. It also traces the obelisk at the square's center, raised two hundred and forty-six years later and paid for by ordinary citizens rather than the government. Look for the bronze panels running up its sides, each one marking a year of the long war that followed.