Lisbon's National Pantheon took so long to build that it became a proverb. "Obras de Santa Engrácia" is the Portuguese expression for anything that seems destined never to be finished, a nod to the nearly 300 years between the first stone and the dome's completion in 1966.

The delay has its own origin story: a Jewish man named Simão Solis, wrongly accused of desecrating the original church in 1630, is said to have cursed the project from the scaffold before his execution.

What finally emerged is one of Portugal's finest Baroque buildings, with a Greek cross plan designed by royal architect João Antunes. Inside, polychrome marble lines almost every surface, and cenotaphs honour Vasco da Gama and Luís de Camões alongside the actual tombs of fado legend Amália Rodrigues and footballer Eusébio.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours through Alfama trace the neighbourhood's layered history, connecting the Pantheon's rooftop views to the streets, churches and stories that spread out below it.