‘It’s deeper than slavery’: Lisbon street project reclaims Portugal’s unseen black history

A statue of the Marquês de Sá da Bandeira, a noted abolitionist, in Lisbon. But Portugal’s black history has been less visibly commemorated until now. Photograph: Maria Abranches/The Observer

It takes just a short stroll around Lisbon’s Sâo Domingos church to get a sense of its centuries-long history; a monument bearing the Star of David commemorates the thousands of Jews killed by a mob in 1506, while the church’s scorched pillars hint at the 1959 fire that ravaged its interior, laying waste its gilded woodcarvings.

What has long remained hidden from view, however, is the church’s deep connection to the city’s African population, as the seat of a 16th-century black religious brotherhood.