With their grand vistas – one leading towards the triumphal arch that gives way to Praça do Comércio and the bank of the river Tejo, in Lisbon, the other linking Place de la Concorde and Place de la Madeleine, in Paris – rua Augusta and rue Royale typify the urban thinking of the Age of Enlightenment and, this year, are the subject of a philatelic issue shared between France and Portugal.
Rua Augusta was the jewel of the reconstruction plan devised by the Marquis of Pombal after the violent earthquake of 1755, which destroyed large parts of the city. The construction of the triumphal arch began in 1815, with the placing of the colonnades, and nished in 1873. Meanwhile, rue Royale was conceived by the architect of King Louis XV, Ange-Jacques Gabriel, who also designed Place de La Concorde, and was built between 1758 and 1785 in the place where, until 1733, Ponte Saint-Honoré and the old forti cations of Paris were to be found.
Both stand as proof of the magni cence of an era and of a desire to beautify the cities that in uenced rational ideas.
