Joana Marques

I studied literature before guiding, so Chiado's old cafes, where several well-known Portuguese writers used to sit, are the streets I know best from books before I ever knew them as a neighbourhood. On camera I walk between the cafes explaining who wrote where, then move to the roofless ruins of Carmo Convent, left exactly as the 1755 earthquake left them as a kind of memorial. I keep the pace unhurried at the ruins especially, since the open sky above the arches says more than any commentary I could add. Seven years of guiding has not dulled that particular silence for me.