In Portugal the expression “Obras de Santa Engrácia” (literally “Works of Santa Engrácia”) has become synonymous for a never-ending construction.
Of course for most of those 285 years there was no construction going on at all. It took a dictator, António de Oliveira Salazar, to finally get it finished. Well, sometimes a dictatorship has its advantages.
By the way, Salazar is an interesting figure among dictators, and it’s rewarding to read the Wikipedia entry.
Of course a dictator he was, and of course there were cruel measures of suppression, deadly prison camps, censorship and what else usually goes with authoritarian regimes, but at the same time Salazar was an unusually cultivated, modest and I might even say honest man.
That’s definitely in stark contrast to the likes of Hitler and Mussolini, who both were rather uncultivated brutes.
Santa Engrácia also has a fine roof terrace. We’ve seen it from afar yesterday, here it is again with a group of young people, posing for a photograph.