1755 Lisbon earthquake
The 1755 Lisbon earthquake struck on a Saturday, the Feast of All Saints, at around 09:40 local time. It hit a devout Catholic country on one of the holiest mornings of its year. Together with a tsunami and fires, the earthquake almost completely destroyed Lisbon and the areas around it. The disaster did not stay in Portugal. Its waves crossed an ocean, its news unsettled the philosophers of the Enlightenment, and its aftermath produced a city that visitors still seek out.
This documentary asks how a single morning could reach so far. Where did the shaking begin, and how widely did the damage travel? Who was lost, and what irreplaceable things disappeared with them? Who took charge of the ruins, and what kind of city rose in their place? And why did some of Europe's sharpest minds feel they had to answer what happened?
Contemporary reports say the ground shook for somewhere between three and a half and six minutes. In the city center, fissures opened as wide as 5 m. Survivors ran for the open space of the docks, hoping the waterfront would be safer than the streets. There they watched the sea draw back, exposing a plain of mud littered with lost cargo and shipwrecks.
About 40 minutes after the shaking, the water came back. A tsunami engulfed the harbor and the downtown area and rushed up the Tagus river. One account has riders on horseback "forced to gallop as fast as possible to the upper grounds for fear of being carried away." Two more waves followed the first.
Candles lit for All Saints' Day in homes and churches across the city were knocked over by the shocks. The flames they started grew into a firestorm that burned for hours. It asphyxiated people as far as 30 m from the blaze itself. The waves that emptied Lisbon's harbor, meanwhile, were already striking coasts far beyond the city.
Almost every coastal town and village of the Algarve was heavily damaged, with one exception. Faro was spared because the sandy banks of Ria Formosa shielded it. In Lagos, the waves climbed to the top of the city walls. The tsunami destroyed some Algarve coastal fortresses and razed several houses at lower levels.
The damage ran well inland and up the coast. Peniche, Cascais and Setúbal were visibly affected, and parts of the Fort of São Filipe de Setúbal were damaged. Covilhã, near the Serra da Estrela mountain range, lost part of its castle walls and its large towers. Buildings in Cova da Beira and in Salamanca, Spain, were also damaged.
On the island of Madeira, Funchal and many smaller settlements suffered significant damage. In the Azores, the sea pushed about 150 m inland and wrecked most of the ports. Ceuta and Mazagon in northern Africa saw the tsunami hit their coastal fortifications, sometimes washing over them. Across the strait, the Andalusian Atlantic coast was swept and the city of Cadiz was damaged.
Shocks were felt as far away as Finland, and some sources even place them in Greenland and the Caribbean. Tsunamis as tall as 20 m ran along the North African coast and reached Martinique and Barbados. Cornwall was hit, and in Galway the tsunami partly destroyed the section of city wall known as the Spanish Arch. In County Clare, Aughinish Island was created when a low connection to the mainland was washed away. At Kinsale, vessels spun in the harbor and water poured into the marketplace. In 2015, letters from Brazilian authorities of the time, describing damage from gigantic waves, suggested the tsunami may have reached Brazil too.
Seismologists estimate a magnitude of 7.7 or greater, with the epicenter in the Atlantic about 200 km west-southwest of Cape St. Vincent and about 290 km southwest of Lisbon. Lisbon had suffered such blows before; this was the third known large-scale earthquake to hit the city, after those of 1356 and 1531. Early hypotheses placed the source at the Gorringe Ridge, about 320 km southwest of Lisbon. Simulations then showed that the observed tsunami effects demanded a source closer to the Portuguese shore. A seismic reflection survey of the ocean floor in 1992 detected a 50 km thrust fault southwest of Cape St. Vincent, with a throw of more than 1 km. That structure may have created the primary tectonic event.
Economic historian Álvaro Pereira put Lisbon's population at the time at approximately 200,000 people. He estimated that 30,000 to 40,000 of them were killed, with perhaps another 10,000 dying in Morocco. A study in 2009 found the contemporary reports vague and hard to separate from those of a different local series of earthquakes on the 18th and the 19th of November. Pereira's total for Portugal, Spain and Morocco, counting the fires and the tsunami, was 40,000 to 50,000 people.
Eighty-five percent of Lisbon's buildings were destroyed. The losses included famous palaces and libraries and most of the city's examples of the distinctive 16th-century Manueline architecture. Several buildings that had survived the shaking were brought down by the fire afterward. The new opera house, the Ópera do Tejo, had opened only seven months earlier and burned to the ground.
The Royal Ribeira Palace stood beside the Tagus in what is now the Praça do Comércio. The earthquake and tsunami destroyed it, and with it a royal library of 70,000 volumes. Hundreds of works of art went too, among them paintings by Titian, Rubens and Correggio. The royal archives vanished along with detailed records of the explorations of Vasco da Gama and other early navigators. Across the city, the palace of Henrique de Meneses, 3rd Marquis of Louriçal, lost its 18,000 books. Documents on the earlier 1722 Algarve earthquake, sent to Lisbon for archiving, were mostly lost in the same fire.
Lisbon Cathedral, St Paul's Cathedral, Santa Catarina, São Vicente de Fora and the Church of Nossa Senhora da Conceição Velha were all damaged. The Royal Hospital of All Saints in the Rossio square, then the largest public hospital, was consumed by fire, and hundreds of patients burned to death. The tomb of the national hero Nuno Álvares Pereira was lost as well. Visitors can still walk through the ruins of the Carmo Convent, kept as they are to remind Lisboners of the destruction.
King Joseph I and his court had attended Mass at sunrise and then left the city. They were fulfilling the wish of one of the king's daughters to spend the holiday away from Lisbon. The family escaped unharmed, and afterward the court lived in a huge complex of tents and pavilions in the hills of Ajuda. The king developed a fear of living within walls that never waned. Only after his death did his daughter, Queen Maria I, begin building the royal Palace of Ajuda, which still stands on the site of the old tented camp.
The prime minister, the 1st Marquis of Pombal, also survived. Asked what was to be done, he reportedly replied, "Bury the dead and heal the living." Firefighters were sent against the flames. Teams of workers and ordinary citizens were ordered to clear the thousands of corpses before disease could spread. Against custom and against the wishes of the Church, many bodies were loaded onto barges and buried at sea beyond the mouth of the Tagus.
To prevent disorder, the Portuguese Army was deployed in the ruined city. Gallows were built at high points around Lisbon to deter looters, and more than thirty people were publicly executed. The army also stopped many able-bodied citizens from fleeing, pressing them into relief and reconstruction work.
Pombal also sent a query to every parish in the country asking about the earthquake and its effects. One question asked whether the sea rose or fell first, and by how many hands it rose above the normal. Others asked when the shaking began, how long it lasted, and whether buildings fell more to one side than the other. No one had attempted such a large-scale, objective investigation of an earthquake before, and Pombal is regarded as a forerunner of modern seismology. The priests' replies still sit in the Torre do Tombo national archive, where modern scientists use them to reconstruct the event.
On the 4th of December 1755, a little more than a month after the earthquake, Manuel da Maia, chief engineer to the realm, presented four plans. The first and cheapest rebuilt the old city with recycled materials. The second and third widened certain streets. The fourth proposed razing the entire Baixa quarter and "laying out new streets without restraint." The king and his minister chose the last.
In less than a year, the city was cleared of debris. Keen to have a perfectly ordered city, the king commissioned big squares, large rectilinear avenues and widened streets. These became the new mottos of Lisbon.
The Pombaline buildings are among the earliest seismically protected constructions in Europe. Builders made small wooden models for testing, and they simulated earthquakes by marching troops around them. The rebuilt Lower Town, the Baixa Pombalina, is now one of Lisbon's famed attractions. The same principles shaped sections of other Portuguese cities, including Vila Real de Santo António in the Algarve.
Not every project survived. In 1760, a plan to build a new royal palace in the Campo de Ourique neighborhood was abandoned for lack of priority or interest. A more lasting institution grew from the social disarray the earthquake left behind. In 1780, Queen Maria I, known as A Pia, "Maria the Pious," founded the Casa Pia, organized by the Police Intendant Pina Manique. It gave shelter and schooling to children in need.
Most of the important churches in the city lay in ruins, and the disaster had fallen on a major religious holiday. Citizens of a staunchly Catholic country were left anxious and confused. Theologians and philosophers speculated about a religious cause and message, and many read the earthquake as divine judgment.
Voltaire turned the disaster into argument, in Candide and in his Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne, the "Poem on the Lisbon disaster." Candide attacks the idea that all is for the best in "the best of all possible worlds," one closely supervised by a benevolent deity. Lisbon gave Voltaire a counterexample. Theodor W. Adorno wrote, "The earthquake of Lisbon sufficed to cure Voltaire of the theodicy of Leibniz." Jean-Jacques Rousseau drew a different lesson. He believed the devastation was so severe because too many people lived in the close quarters of a city, and he used it to argue against cities.
Immanuel Kant published three separate texts on the earthquake in 1756. As a younger man he had collected all the information available in news pamphlets and formed a theory of what causes earthquakes. His theory involved shifts in huge caverns filled with hot gases. It was inaccurate, yet it was one of the first systematic attempts to explain earthquakes in natural rather than supernatural terms. Walter Benjamin said Kant's slim early book "probably represents the beginnings of scientific geography in Germany. And certainly the beginnings of seismology."
Werner Hamacher argued that the quake reached into the language of philosophy itself. After Lisbon, he wrote, the metaphors of ground and tremor were "no longer merely figures of speech." He claimed that the foundational certainty of René Descartes' philosophy began to shake in its wake.
Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, the 1st Marquis of Pombal, was the king's favourite. The aristocracy despised him as the upstart son of a country squire, and he in turn thought the old nobles corrupt and incapable of practical action. Before the earthquake, the two sides fought constantly for power and royal favour. His competent response effectively severed the power of the old aristocratic factions. Silent resentment against King Joseph I still rose, and it culminated in an attempted assassination in 1758. The reprisals that followed eliminated the powerful Duke of Aveiro and the Távora family.
In 1752, a Sebastianist prophet had predicted that a terrible earthquake would destroy Lisbon on All Saints' Day. When the earthquake struck on exactly that day in 1755, there was a surge of converts to Sebastianism.
A study in 2009 estimated that the earthquake cost between 32 and 48 per cent of Portugal's GDP. Despite strict controls, prices and wages stayed volatile for years. Recovery raised the wage premium of construction workers. The study's authors called the disaster an opportunity to reform the economy and to reduce its semi-dependency on Britain.
The earthquake has also kept its place in the arts. The English Baroque composer Richard Carter composed and published an ode on it. The 2014 video game Assassin's Creed Rogue, by Ubisoft, makes a fictionalised version of the earthquake a main plot element, alongside an earlier quake in Port-au-Prince, Saint-Domingue, that may depict the historical earthquake of 1751. The Portuguese Gothic metal band Moonspell made 1755 a concept album telling the story. Avram Davidson sent the time-traveling heroes of Masters of the Maze to Lisbon in one of their many stops across time and place.
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Common questions
How many people died in the 1755 Lisbon earthquake?
Economic historian Álvaro Pereira estimated that 30,000 to 40,000 of Lisbon's roughly 200,000 residents were killed, and perhaps another 10,000 died in Morocco. His total for Portugal, Spain and Morocco was 40,000 to 50,000.
Where was the epicenter of the earthquake?
It lay in the Atlantic Ocean, about 200 km west-southwest of Cape St. Vincent and about 290 km southwest of Lisbon. A 1992 survey found a 50 km thrust fault there that may have created the primary tectonic event.
How did Lisbon rebuild after the earthquake?
The king and Pombal chose the boldest of four plans from chief engineer Manuel da Maia. It razed the entire Baixa quarter and replaced it with large squares and wide, straight avenues. Buildings were tested as small wooden models, with marching troops simulating earthquakes.
Why did the earthquake matter to philosophers?
Voltaire used it in Candide and in a poem to attack the idea that this is the best of all possible worlds. Rousseau argued against crowded cities, and Kant tried to explain earthquakes in natural terms.
Why is Pombal seen as a forerunner of modern seismology?
He sent a questionnaire to every parish asking about timing, duration, direction, the behavior of the sea and the damage. It was the first large-scale objective investigation of an earthquake, and the answers are still archived in the Torre do Tombo.
All sources
34 references cited across the entry
- 2JournalA Reassessment of the Magnitude of the 1755 Lisbon EarthquakeJoao F. B. D. Fonseca — GeoScienceWorld — 2020
- 4The Lisbon Earthquake6 May 2016
- 6'This Gulf Of Fire' Examines The Lisbon, Portugal, Earthquake In 1755NPR — 2 November 2015
- 8O terramoto de 1755 ao redor da GardunhaJornal do Fundão
- 9Así vivió Salamanca el terremoto de Lisboa de 1755: "parecía que se levantaban las losas de los difuntos"Tribuna de Salamanca — 1 November 2024
- 10An Extraordinary and Surprising Agitation of the Waters, though without Any Perceptible Motion of the Earth, Having Been Observed in Various Parts of This Island, Both Maritime and Inland, on the Same Day, and Chiefly about the Time, That the More Violent Commotions of Both Earth and Waters so Extensively Affected Many Very Distant Parts of the Globe; the Following Accounts, Relating to the Former, Have Been Transmitted to the Society; in Which are Specified the Times and Places when and Where They HappenedJohn Robertson et al. — 1755
- 11Histoire de ma vie, Book 2, Ch. XXVI; Casanova himself noted feeling the shocks when he was imprisoned in "The Leads" in Venice and specifically states they were the same ones that destroyed Lisbon
- 12Brockhaus' Konversations-Lexikon. 14th ed., Leipzig, Berlin and Vienna 1894; Vol. 6, p. 248
- 14Documentos mostram que tsunami atingiu costa brasileira século XVIIIMarcos Losekann — Rede Globo — 18 October 2015
- 17Pereira (2006), pp. 8–9, 33–9921.
- 19BookThe Lisbon Earthquake in 1755: The First Modern DisasterDynes, Russell R. — 2003
- 20BookThe Lisbon EarthquakeT. D. Kendrick
- 21Gunn (2008), p. 77.
- 22Shrady, The Last Day pp. 152–155.
- 23BookThe Lisbon EarthquakeJ.B. Lippincott Company
- 24JournalThe Opportunity of a Disaster: The Economic Impact of the 1755 Lisbon EarthquakeAlvaro S. Pereira — 1 June 2009
- 25JournalJapan tsunami is small compared to five of world's biggest tsunamis28 October 2010
- 27BookPremises: Essays on Philosophy and Literature from Kant to CelanWerner Hamacher — Harvard University Press — 1996
- 28BookEarthquakes in Human History : The Far-Reaching Effects of Seismic DisruptionsJelle deBoer et al. — Princeton University Press — 2005
- 29Shrady, The Last Day, pp.145–146
- 30BookThe Illustrated History of Natural DisastersJan Kozák et al. — Springer Science & Business Media — 2010
- 31Carter, RichardRoger Fiske, revised by Rachel E. Cowgill — Oxford University Press — 2001
- 32Assassin's Creed Rogue confirmed by Ubisoft – here's the first trailerMichael McWhertor — 5 August 2014
- 33Significant Earthquake InformationNational Geophysical Data Center / World Data Service (NGDC/WDS) — National Geophysical Data Center, NOAA — 1972
- 34A Reassessment of the Magnitude of the 1755 Lisbon EarthquakeJoao F. B. D. Fonseca — 2020