The mosaic pavement system, however, as we know it today in Lisbon, was used for the first time in 1840, on a large surface in the parade ground of the military headquarters, on the main hill of Lisbon. After this first experience, the inventor of this system, Lieutenant-General Eusebio Furtado, a military Engineer and Governor of Castelo de S. Jorge between 1840 and 1846, presented the Town Council with a project for the paving of the main square in Lisbon, Rossio, and got the approval, for the making of the famous waves called "mar largo".

Calçadas Portuguesas (portugese pavement) / wikipedia
- bill 3-22-2009 3:29 pm [add a comment]

Now we go to the Legend of the Sidewalk of Alpajares or Calçada of the Devil

It says the legend that “in old times was everything for these small farms direful abrupt declivities and precipices, a knight come of the sides of White Bark in storm night, arrived at the edge of the Ribeira of the Monastery that went of sea the mount. Given the impious necessity to cross the brave water course, therefore it had loved its to the wait, suspirou aflito: God is valid me or the Devil. It was the Satan that appeared to the calling and said: If to give your soul to me, before the black rooster sings, I will give to a bridge and a road to you so that you can follow your raid by horseback without risk of danger. The Knight accepted and the infernal mason and its acólitos atarefaram themselves in the bold construction of a sidewalk between fraguedos, distributing 18 elegant lancetes in gogos of the ribeira, to the sound strident to sing of Witches who in the place of fetichism if had congregated to festejar the conquest of plus a soul. Here it is that the rooster sings three times when only it lacked to place the two last rocks Da Ponte. The knight I free of its continued commitment its trip and the enraged Devil, disappeared with its acólitos through one bocarra that it confided between cliffs”.

Legends to the part, the historical reality of the related sidewalk is well different, after all does not pass of a sidewalk Roman, plus one between many, this with the particularitity of throughout the times, and still today, to have despertado the imaginary tramway-car of the local populations. After all, things of the devil had always had, until sidewalk….

According to IPPAR “was classified in 1977 as “Listed property”, the “Sidewalk of Alpajares”, or “Sidewalk of the Mouros”, as more it will be known local, it integrated the way Roman of carácter secondary that it crossed the river Douro (in the immediacy of the locality of White Bark) and the ribeira of the Monastery, until arriving at mirandês plateaus. Currently, only some of its original, visible chunks remain close to the convergence ribeiras them of the Brita and it Monastery, from which if it draws out for the hillside of Alpajares of ziguezagueante form, until arriving at muralhado of the town of São Paulo, built in the Age of the Iron in the top of a mountain of a sobranceiro ridge to those the same ribeiras, with occupational certifications of the periods Roman and medieval. E will have been, in truth, excellent implantation strategical of this Castrates that it subjazeu to its election on the part of the Roman power, that thus made to confluir for its blockhouse the sidewalk, so necessary to one célere movement of its diverse constituent elements.
Structuralized throughout about eight hundred meters in flagstone become attached in shale and pebbles of small dimension, the sidewalk it possesss steps intercalated with certain regularity, enters the three four meters, presenting itself, still, strengthened with a sidewall in the zone where the declivity of the hillside if discloses accented more, appointedly in the curves of the tracing of the way, that, as occurred with Castro (vide supplies), would finish for being reused throughout the times, to certify, in the deep one, the relevancy of its localization and the relative abundance of essential natural resources the normal subsistence of the communities way human beings, more or less, uninterrupted.”

video
- bill 3-23-2009 12:31 am [add a comment]