3385 - Celebrating the Age of Discovery


Well, you know that kind of monuments, you know that kind of architecture, and although Salazar may have been no typical fascist like Mussolini or Franco, he was a dictator and this is totalitarian architecture.

On the other hand, among pieces of totalitarian architecture, the Padrão dos Descobrimentos is one of the more interesting. From the back a cross is clearly visible. That’s to remind you in whose name all the native Americans, the Africans and the Indians were slaughtered. From the side there is resemblance to a ship’s prow. You’ll see the side tomorrow.

I was there in the early afternoon and I can tell you, this place is crowded. Instead of waiting forever, I’ve taken a sequence of images and combined the uncrowded fragments later in Photoshop. Things like that were done in times of film as well, but today it’s absolutely painless. It couldn’t have taken me more than ten minutes.