Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra... a very brief visit to Portugal in early September, 2017. Small shops, tatty buildings, broken footpaths are still evident even in the major towns we visited. But the place is lively and has many (other) beautiful things to see, as well as some very decent wines, of course…
A world power in the 15th and 16th century. A seat of learning, commerce, the arts: the heart of a vast overseas empire. But gradually war, commercial competition from other imperial powers and natural disaster — the 1775 Lisbon earthquake — and 50 years of military dictatorship in the 20th century led to centuries’ long economic decline. Only after it joined the European Union in the mid-1980s did living standards again start to approach the level of other European states. Unfortunately, Portugal elected to join the Euro area in 2000 and suffered the decade-long stagnation of growth experienced in most of Southern Europe.
As always, please download the PDF book (13MB) and set your PDF reader/viewer to full-screen to see the images as I intended.
Page thumbnails from the photo-book. Please click the image to download the PDF
