Cascais, Portugal, by Day and Night

We went to Cascais in part in reaction to having been to Lisbon recently. As a Portuguese acquaintance said to us “Lisbon is no longer Portuguese”, it is now packed with tourists, even in early December, and foreign residents with expensive cars and barricaded homes bought to obtain a European residency permit. We remember Lisbon from 10-25 years ago – the crumbling buildings and the street-side barbecues of fish, the ubiquitous graffiti and street art – now largely gone from the centre and the buildings restored. To some extent the same is true of Cascais, particularly around the coastline.

Historically the town was home to many members of royalty not just from Portugal, but Spain, the UK, and Italy as well as a Cuban exiled leader, and remains popular with the super-rich and tourists today. But the old part of town appears the same as it might have been centuries ago. At the bottom of the town near the coastline are Roman remains including part of a stone container used to make fish stock (if I tell you the process you’ll never eat fish stock again).

Pit, lower left, used to dump heavily salted fish to make Roman fish sauce (cropped image)

In my earlier post “Contre-Jour” I showed some images from Cascais taken early in the morning near the coastline. In this post we walk through the old town, by day and by night. Streets are mostly empty at night and house lights usually seemed to be off but night-time never feels threatening – walking round back streets in London would not be so worry-free.

Images are again taken on a Yashica Mat 124G, handheld, using FP4 for daytime and HP5 for night shots. Films were stand developed in Rodinal 100:1, scanned on an Epson GT-X900, processed (straightening and tone curve adjustments) in RawTherapee with some final spotting in GIMP if needed. Night shots are taken at f3.5 and 1/30th second.

Daytime light was startlingly bright with the shadows dark. The featured image shows a typical house wall and the shadow of the rooftop wall on the diagonally opposite building.

Not all buildings are so well kept, this image of a neglected wall is from a reticulated film (see my post “How (not) to Reticulate” for further highly textured images of the town).

Like most old towns Cascais was built on the land without levelling ground beforehand so slopes, sometimes steep, permeate the town. Nearby Lisbon is a more extreme example.

The narrow streets and often difficult corners are used not just as walkways but are indeed roads for delivery and residents’ vehicles, as well as plant life.

At night some streets come alive with roadside cafes and restaurants, and brave souls dressed in winter clothes …

but most are narrow alleyways leading home…

lit by the identical design wall lights…

and somewhere to park the (small) car.

But finally time to walk home by moonlight.

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