Alto do Pina () is a Portuguese quarter and former civil parish, located in the municipality of Lisbon. Located in the centre of the city, the former parish territory had a population of 10,333 inhabitants within an area of 0.84 km2. Inside the city, its name is associated mostly with its success in the yearly Marchas Populares contest.
One of the twelve civil parishes created from the administrative reform of the city approved in February 1959 from lands belonging to Beato, Marvila and Penha de França; Alto do Pina would ultimately be merged with the neighbouring São João de Deus parish in the 2012 administrative reforms, to create a new territory named Areeiro.
Local landmarks include the Fonte Luminosa (Glowing Fountain), where a major rally was held by the Portuguese Socialist Party during the post-revolutionary period of 1975, attacking the influence of the Portuguese Communist Party. Also located in Alto do Pina are the ruins of the vacation house of the consort king of Portugal Ferdinand II.
Toponymy Alto do Pina's name derives from an old farm estate called Quinta (or Arraial) do Pina, existing between the 18th century and the mid-1930s. It is called such after its owner, according to a document dated 1747, a Tomás de Pina. Leaving no descendents, it later passed to his nephew and in 1764 appears as the property of a Captain João Álvares de Pina e Mello. Its location is described as between the Cabeço de Alperche (Penha de França) and "Monte Coxo" (close to Olaias), near the Ladeira do Pina.
Indeed, in Duarte Fava's cartography from 1807 a road marked at the crest of the hill as "Arrayal do Pina" is visible vertically crossing what is now Rua Cristóvão Falcão in the top-right corner of the map. Later, in Silva Pinto's 1911 depiction, the road is staightened out to become the southern section of Rua Barão de Sabrosa with an considerably sized estate visible, in the same area of smaller edifices in Fava's depictions. A perpendicular road leading westbound to the valley in which Avenida Almirante Reis now travels can be seen in both, which would equate to the aforementioned Ladeira, of which now only remains a small dead-end street (Calçada da Ladeira). Both it and the estate are last seen in the 1940 municipal map, prior to the complete execution of the Alameda project.
The name came to represent the hill as well as the neighbourhoods on the L-shaped slope and crest of what is now the eastern half of Alameda, hence the selection of the civil parish name in 1959.
It must be noted however, a good portion of the area and indeed the one that is most recognised under this name - the Bairro do Alto do Pina - is outside the former freguesia's limits, in territory that belonged to São João, now Penha de França. In fact, under the drawn borders, the aforementioned estate described would be in this territory as it is just South of the border. Simultaneous to this fact, in the area of the former parish, it has lost usage in some parts to other toponyms in the area such as Alameda and Areeiro.
History
Early history and city expansion The first mentions of settlements in the area now known as Alto do Pina go back to the during the reign of King John I, Master of Avis (king of Portugal, 1385-1433), due to the existence of fertile land of quality for agriculture and nearby streams. Some estates would begin to appear and with the 1755 earthquake in the 18th century, it would become a sought after area by the noblemen and bourgeoisie of the city for their country homes, during the reconstruction of the city. In this period, its landscape would be characterised by these farms and homesteads, divided by sinuous country lanes, of which there are some vestigial traces in the landscape and local toponymy. In Duarte Fava's previously mentioned 1807 map, we can see where the civil parish lied was at that time marked by a fork in the road close to where Areeiro is today, where the "Estrada da Penha para a Quinta do Areeiro" (road from Penha to Quinta do Areeiro) met the Estrada de Sacavém, one of the main roads leading from the city. This stretch of road from Areeiro to Sacavém was, at the time and well into the 20th century, particularly notable for some of its taverns and inns which were renowned in the area.
The city's expansion toward the area began in the second half of the 19th century with the Industrial Revolution, however, it would take until the 20th century for the city to reach it. In October 1911, a local landowner named Joaquim Gonzalez Garrido gets approval to build a "workers village" (Vila Operária) at Quinta do Bacalhau, initially named after it and later called Bairro Garrido. Originally composed of single storey houses, it was municipalised in 1920 and later demolished for the Alameda project. Adjacent to this was another project in motion in the early decades of the century, by the Sociedade "Bairro dos Aliados", named after the neighbourhood in question. At the end of the First Republic the first municipal controlled-costs neighbourhoods of its kind are conceptualised with one for the families of municipal workers being placed in Alto do Pina. However, this neighbourhood would only be complete during the start of the dictatorship, being built between 1927 and 1935 and would therefore be named Bairro Municipal Presidente Carmona. In 1928, an agreement between the municipality and the then owners of Quinta das Ameias sought to construct the Bairro Popular do Casal Vistoso, but this was never actualised.
Mid-20th century After decades of planning and advances by the mid-1930s, one of the principal axes, Avenida Almirante Reis, reached what would become the civil parish of Alto do Pina with a review of its planning. It is during this period that the wide Alameda Dom Afonso Henriques is opened, on the western end crowned by an athenean-like hill of knowledge in Instituto Superior Técnico and in the other the "Luminous Fountain". Ahead of the city's expansion northward, a revision of the Almirante Reis plan was drawn in 1938, by the hand of architect Faria da Costa [pt], in turn conceptualised within the overall early city plans by Étienne de Gröer [pt]. At the time, the project above Praça do Chile [pt][es] had already begun and expanding the city in this direction had only one major impediment, that being the connection to the previously executed Avenida Guerra Junqueiro.
While this western half of the new section would be devoted to a more upper-class setting, Alto do Pina's section would be a continuation of the style and more modest environment established southeast of Alameda, around the Arroios Market, which while they weren't built with any particular identity, later became known as Bairro dos Actores. Alto do Pina therefore keeps itself closer to the area's routes, housing citizens of a more popular nature. Despite this difference in construction, the westernmost city blocks leading from the avenue attempt to create no visual barrier or difference with the other side of Almirante Reis. The avenue was finally complete with the inauguration of the Areeiro square in 1943 and would continue its axis onward towards the recently built Lisbon Airport. Also notable in this time period is the fact that a considerable amount of the wave of public works of the 1930s and 40s in the Estado Novo have their origin precisely in Alto do Pina and Areeiro, through the various sand quarries in the northern areas of the parish territory, in particularly at Quinta da Montanha, the effects of which were still visible in the early 2000s, namely Alameda's Fonte Luminosa.
At the end of the 1940s, a new urban plan was also created, though it was never formally approved by the central government. Among many of its introductions for the modern, post-Second War European city of 1948 would be the creation of several circular roads, though this idea was largely unfollowed. The territory of Alto do Pina would contend with two, the 3rd and 4th Circulars. The third, projected to connect the Benfica Radial [pt] at Sete Rios to the port at Beato would end up theoretically intersecting the civil parish of Alto do Pina as its northeastern border and the fourth, between Alcântara and Xabregas, would cross the civil parish in Areeiro and the crest of the hill, in what is now Avenida Afonso Costa. Neither project would be complete eastward in its original form beyond Alto do Pina.
By the mid-20th century, the city had consolidated most of the land around its two main axes (Liberdade/República and Almirante Reis) and this meant that management of these new city areas had to differ from how it had been conducted until that point, leading to the administrative reorganization of 1959, in which the freguesia of Alto do Pina is created. Duarte Pacheco and the regime's idealized Lisbon had grown significantly in size during its period, but the city's growth and attractiveness had also led to the creation of many clandestine neighbourhoods or shanty towns, which were a notable phenomena in the two major urban areas during the 1960s and 1970s. The Pina hillcrest, which had not seen construction as an area in the direct cusp of the city centre became an attractive area for these areas to grow - Casal Vistoso, Quinta do Bacalhau and Monte Coxo on the Vale da Montanha hillside were all notable examples of the period. Simultaneously, further along the hillside, Alto do Pina's out-of-parish-southern arm would border one of the most prominent cases, Quinta da Curraleira [pt] which would only be resolved in the new millennium. Other projects were still completed in this period, nonetheless, as is the case of the Bairro da GNR, which was inaugurated in 1966.
Late-20th century and the new millennium After the Carnation Revolution in 1974, the face of Alto do Pina would change significantly as the opposite hillside finally started to gain formal construction from the 1970s onward. During the transitory governments, one of the principal preocupations was that of housing through several mechanisms, alongside the pre-existing FFH (Housing Promotion Fund, Fundo de Fomento da Habitação, 1969-1982). One of the novelties was that of the short-lived SAAL[pt] which helped execute self-construction initiatives allied to many known and upcoming architects. In the civil parish, an association proposed and got approval for the Portugal Novo neighbourhood, which was meant to clean up Monte Coxo and the Quinta do Bacalhau situation.
Geography Alto do Pina is located at the edge of what is traditionally considered central Lisbon, although during its existence as a civil parish, it was part of the 4th Administrative District (bairro administrativo) of the city and therefore grouped with the eastern parishes. Its territory was bordered to the west by São João de Deus, to the north-west by Alvalade, to the north-east by Marvila, to the south-east by São João and to the south by São Jorge de Arroios.
Strictly speaking, it was delimited in Alameda Dom Afonso Henriques to the South; Avenida Almirante Reis, Areeiro and Avenida Almirante Gago Coutinho to the West with a slight detour after the Cintura Line. Its northern/north-eastern border would have been the 3rd circular as per the Urbanization Plan of 1948, but this was never built, and to the south-east on its access to Olaias, though this once again was not executed and therefore crossed Avenida Carlos Pinhão, before reaching Rua Aquiles Machado, Calçada da Picheleira, Rotunda das Olaias and Rua Cristóvão Falcão.
Meanwhile, it should be noted, the Bairro do Alto do Pina, effectively the southern arm of the area, in what was formerly São João is roughly situated between Rua Barão de Sabrosa, Avenida Morais Soares and Rua Engenheiro Santos Simões.
Physical geography