Praça do Comércio still goes by its old name among Lisboetas: Terreiro do Paço, the palace grounds. That's because for over two centuries, this was where the Ribeira Palace stood, home to Portugal's royal court and a library of 70,000 volumes.

Then came 9:40 am on All Saints' Day, 1755. Seagulls circled overhead, crying louder and louder. Rats and snakes scurried through the streets, all heading away from the river. Minutes later, the earthquake struck.

What rose from the ruins became one of Europe's largest squares, a vast riverside gateway designed not for kings but for commerce. Under its yellow arcades, merchants orchestrated global trade while King José I, mounted on his bronze horse, gazed toward the Tagus. The marble steps at the water's edge, Cais das Colunas, once welcomed foreign dignitaries directly into the palace itself.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours use the square to explain how that single November morning reshaped Lisbon's destiny, tracing the earthquake's impact from the first ominous animal warnings through Pombal's radical reconstruction plan that gave the city its rational grid of anti-seismic buildings.