Praça do Príncipe Real

Garden · Príncipe RealLisbon,Portugal

A Lisbon square roofed by one cypress trained flat over an iron frame, with a vaulted water reservoir of 1864 beneath the paving.

Praça do Príncipe Real has one tree for a ceiling. A Mexican cypress has been trained flat over a circular iron frame for well over a century, and its branches have closed into a continuous green roof wide enough to shade the middle of the square. Underneath it there are tables, a kiosk and old men playing cards. Beneath the paving is the Patriarcal reservoir, a vaulted chamber built in 1864 to hold water for this part of the city. The name comes from the Patriarchal church that stood on this ground until it burned down in 1769. The rest of the square is the ordinary business of a Lisbon neighbourhood: benches, a playground, a Saturday market and dogs. It was laid out in the nineteenth century for the middle class moving uphill out of the crowded old quarters, and the houses around it have turned into shops, restaurants and hotels over the last two decades. The middle of the square has not changed at all.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Sit at the kiosk under the tree — the neighbourhood uses this square every day, and half an hour at a table shows you more of it than a walk round the edge.
Saturday morning brings the market — an organic market fills the square, which turns it from a shaded sitting place into a working one for a few hours.
The reservoir below opens on set days only — a stair from the square goes down into it, and the guided visit walks a tunnel through to the São Pedro de Alcântara garden.
The tree is a Mexican cypress — it is not a cedar, although many signs and guidebooks in the city say it is, which is worth knowing if you go looking for it by name.

Things to do

1
Sit under the tree for half an hour
Take a table at the kiosk under the canopy and stay there. Card games, dogs, prams, deliveries and conversation go on around you, under a green ceiling held up by a metal frame. This is a square the neighbourhood uses every day rather than a sight visitors pass through.
2
Look for the frame inside the canopy
Stand directly under the middle of the cypress and look up into it. The branches were tied out along a circular iron frame, and the frame is still there holding the shape. Once you have seen it, it is clear that the flat green ceiling above you was made by gardeners rather than grown that way.