The Carmo Convent was Lisbon's largest church when, on All Saints' Day 1755, its Gothic vaults collapsed onto a congregation at prayer. An earthquake destroyed the building and its library of 5,000 volumes, but Lisbon chose not to rebuild. The roofless nave, with its arches open to the sky, remains the city's most visible scar from that catastrophe.
Its founder, the military commander Nuno Álvares Pereira, picked this hilltop deliberately, it reminded him of Mount Carmel in Palestine, spiritual home of the Carmelites. Centuries later, the square outside became the stage for another defining moment when Portugal's dictator surrendered here during the 1974 Carnation Revolution.

Today the ruins house an archaeological museum whose collection ranges from a Roman sarcophagus carved with Muses to Peruvian mummies.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours trace the convent's connections to the 1755 earthquake, exploring how one morning reshaped an entire city and why Lisbon chose to preserve the wreckage rather than erase it.