The Tagus glimpsed behind a bend, the light of the day’s end, the silence of alleys and stairways lit by ‘melancholy lamps’, the ‘swaying masts of ships’, the glow of signs, bars, cinemas, the shimmer of the river waters under the morning sun. Accustomed to walking from her home in Travessa das Mónicas to Chiado, Sophia immortalised in dozens of poems the impressions she gathered during these walks, as the city unfolded before her eyes.

Even today, ‘when we walk / In haste or distracted along the streets’, there are places along this route worth our pause. Such is the case of the famous Santa Luzia Viewpoint, Lisbon Cathedral, or the Church of Saint Anthony, further down on the same street. Continuing downhill, beyond Rossio, one reaches the well-known Rua Augusta, which opens onto Terreiro do Paço through a triumphal arch, atop which there is a viewpoint, accessible by a lift and two steep flights of stairs. And in the Bertrand Bookshop in Chiado, the world’s oldest bookshop still in operation, there is a room dedicated exclusively to Sophia