How to read the tiles on our stairs

If you are staying on the second floor or higher, you will walk past the tiles on our staircase at least twice a day. Most people give them a glance. A few stop, and ask what they are looking at. This is for those few.

What they show

The panel on the first landing is a river scene. A flat-bottomed boat with a square sail stands in the middle, and on the quay a woman balances a basket of fish on her head. She is a varina, one of the fishwives who walked from the coast to sell in the city streets. You can tell by the way she holds her hands on her hips, which every Lisbon child learned to copy.

The long strip that runs up the wall beside the stairs is a pattern called a border, and it repeats every eleven tiles. Count them. Each section has a small flower in the middle and a swirl at the edges. The painter who did it was not working to a template, and the third flower in each repeat has an extra petal.

How old they are

The panels date from about the 1780s. We know because the plaster behind the second landing carries a date, 1783, scratched in with the tip of a trowel by whoever set the tiles. They are older than anything else you will see in the house, except perhaps the beams on the top floor.

They survived the earthquake of 1755 in a roundabout way. The house itself was built after it. Alfama stood on firm rock and came through better than the lower city, and when the neighbours rebuilt, they reused old tiles from houses that had fallen. So some of the blue and white you see was made before the earthquake and put up afterwards.

Some of the blue and white you see was made before the earthquake and put up afterwards.

How to tell old from new

There are three quick signs. The glaze on old tiles has a network of fine cracks, like the skin of an old apple. The edges are slightly rounded where the tile was pressed in a mould. And the blue is never perfectly even, because the pigment was cobalt painted by hand on raw glaze, which soaks in unevenly.

On the second landing there are four tiles that are new. We had them made by a workshop in Beco do Forno when a plumber cracked a corner. They are good copies, but they are too clean. You will see them once you know to look.

Why this matters to us

We could have taken the tiles out, stored them and put in a modern staircase. Several people suggested it. We kept them because they are the reason the house feels like a house and not a showroom. Every time somebody trails a suitcase up the stairs, they hit the same corner, and the tile there has a small chip that is now older than any of us.

If you want to learn more, ask Rui. He has a folder of photographs from when we took the plaster off, and he will show you if you ask nicely.