It was the Baixa that felt the full force of the 1755 earthquake, which destroyed much of the neighbourhood. From its ruins, the Marquês de Pombal created an entirely new centre, using a grid layout of streets and linking the riverfront Praça do Comércio with the busy Rossio square. The streets were flanked by uniform, Neo-Classical buildings and named according to the shopkeepers and craftsmen who traded there – Rua do Ouro was the goldsmiths’ street, and Rua dos Sapateiros that of the shoemakers.

Some 80 years later, the Arco da Rua Augusta was built to celebrate the Baixa’s reconstruction. The Avenida de Liberdade followed shortly afterwards, laid out in 1882 as the city’s main avenue between the Baixa and Parque Eduardo VII. Fashioned on Paris’s Champs-Élysées, it is still the city’s most upmarket area, lined with grand 19th-century mansions and a tree-dotted central strip.