I was really taken by this mural in Belém last month, and when I discovered how big it was, I knew it needed a video rather than a series of photographs of the whole thing. But I photographed part of it, anyway, for posterity.
As it turns out, the mural was commissioned in the spring of 2013 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Portuguese newsmagazine Visão (Vision). The street artists are the ARM Collective, the duo of MAR and RAM.
Os Lusíadas is an epic poem of Iliad proportions, written by Portuguese poet Luís de Camões in the 16th century. It’s about the discovery of a sea route to India by the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama, which I’m sure is scintillating reading but perhaps not in one sitting. If you’re not Portuguese, you missed out on learning the entirety of Os Lusíadas in school. The poem has 10 cantos and 1,102 stanzas!
You can find the mural on Avenida da Índia, just east of the Coach Museum and directly across the street from the Museum of Electricity. You can even see part of the mural on Google Street View.
July 22, 2017
Album: Lisbon 2017