Paper short abstract:

In this paper I intend to present some central questions to the anthropology and tourism in the contemporary world. Thus, based on the Empire Square, located in Lisbon, will explore a number of concepts at the crossroads of local identity (the square represents the national identity) displayed to a global audience (the tourist of the XXI century).

Paper long abstract:

The Lisbon Empire Square has been a symbolic center of the Portuguese capital and the country since the sixteenth century. The caravels and ships that gave new worlds to the world left from there, giving rise to the golden age of Portuguese history.

However, its importance as a central place in the nation begins to draw to the eighteenth century.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Museum of Ethnology José Leite de Vasconcelos was installed in the square. This museum was associated with another set of monuments central to the narratives of the modern nation, as the Torre de Belém and the Monastery of Jeronimos. All of them constitute the memory of the nation, turning the square into a place of memory.

In 1940, while Europe was living World War II, the square was the central element of the centenary celebrations of the Portuguese independence. Under the fascist regime of Salazar, it were constructed some pavilions to exhibit the Portuguese Empire such as built the Museum of Popular Art, as part of commemorative centennial of Portuguese independence in 1140 and the restoration of independence in 1640.

In 1985, when the square was already a major tourist destination in the capital, was signed there, the treaty of the Portuguese access to the European Economic Community.

Today, the square is a document of the Portuguese history such as the discourses associated with the Portuguese national community, displayed to a global audience, composed by millions of tourists who visit it.