Welcome to the Lisbon cruise port guide. This massive city of 2,7 million is something different. It is not just your ordinary Portuguese city. Lisbon is Lisbon which is a character on its own. It is the capital city of Portugal that also serves as the political centre, cultural centre and according to the locals: centre of the world. 27% of all Portuguese live in Lisbon and you could imagine how far stretched out the city is. There is always something new to find in this town. On your 150th visit you can still explore something new in the town and that is what makes Lisbon absolutely unique. You can never get bored with it. The city lays a couple of km up the Tagus river. This is the famous river from which the explorers departed on their voyages to the unknown. Many buildings and even neighborhoods still remind up of these times in the 15th and 16th century. We refer to this era as the age of the discoveries. The time when Henry the Navigator and Vasco da Gama would remap the world. All that wealth that came back from the new world had been put back into Lisbon and that is what makes it architecture absolutely unique. However they city has been destroyed by an immense earthquake in 1755. 85% of the town was destroyed and thousands were killed. Lisbon rebuild the city centre with the help of Marques de Pombal. He was a visionairy. Instead of rebuilding the medieval town he decided to demolish the remains of the earthquake and rebuild the downtown in accordance with the modern urban rules. The result is that Lisbon and its urban planning became an example for the rest of Europe.