ABSTRACT
It is certainly true that most of the major examples of planned urban development since the late sixteenth century are to be found in Lisbon and, to a lesser extent, Oporto. Two such examples are the rebuilding of Lisbon after the earthquake of 1755 and the remodelling of the Praça da Ribeira in Oporto at the end of the eighteenth century. In general terms, however, urban planning has been fairly weak in Portugal, and this is true even of its two main cities, so that the country seems to have contributed little to the development of new ideas in planning thought and practice. Thus, although the Portuguese did play an important part in the transmission of urban planning ideas to cities such as Bahia (Brazil) and Luanda (Angola) in its overseas territories[4], the particular interest in studying urban built-form and planning in Portugal during the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries is to appreciate how a variety of foreign influences were adopted and implemented in its towns and cities. French and Italian influences were probably the strongest, as can be seen in the work of such as Nasoni in the eighteenth century and Auzelle in the twentieth century, but at certain times both English (for example, Whitehead) and German (for example, Ludovice) architects have also been influential.
