Lisbon Municipality (Portugal)

Lisboa

Last modified: 2001-10-24 by antonio martins
Keywords: lisbon | lisboa | coat of arms (ship) | sail ship: 1 mast | crow | cormorant | raven | waves: 7 | saint vincent |
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• Incorrect variation (upside down)
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  • Ginásio Clube Português
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• Lisbon flag and arms info, in Portuguese.
  reported by Dov Gutterman, 02 Apr 1999

The municipal flag of Lisbon is a gironny of 8, black and white with or without the coat of arms in the middle. Proportions 1:1 or 2:3.
Pascal Vagnat, 14 Dec 1997

The flag is gyronny of eight, black over white; in the center, the coat of arms. These are: or, on a see of seven wavy fesses vert and argent, a sail ship sable, with rudder, one mast and respective ropes, all lined argent; flag and sails (furled in five “pockets”) of the same; at both ends of the ship, two ravens sable lined argent, each pointing to the center of the shield. Mural crown or with five apparent towers (capital city rank), collar of the Order of Tower and Sword, and white scroll with the motto "MUI NOBRE E SEMPRE LEAL CIDADE DE LISBOA" (most noble and always loyal city of Lisbon) in black upper case letters.
António Martins, 07 Mar 1999

The story behind this coat of arms relates to Saint Vincent, patron of the city (unlike Saint Anthony of Lisbon and Padova, who “just” born here). According to a legend this saint died in Algarve, southern Portugal, and was carried (back?) to Lisbon in a ship that set sail in the appropriately called St. Vincent Cape (the SW tip of Portugal, in Vila do Bispo municipality); here two ravens perched on the ship and set guard to the holy corps untill the arrival in Lisbon. These are usually said to have been “sea crows” (cormorants) instead, but they could also be P. pyrrocorax (“Red beaked crow”, in portuguese), since they are in the same family as ravens. The legend says raven, anyway, and it became the Lisbon’s mascot — where ravens and other kinds of crows are almost absent, by the way, all you can see is millions of pigeons and sparrows.
António Martins, 07 Mar 1999

I have just returned from a vacation that was spent partly in Lisbon. Along with the Portuguese flag, the municipal flag of Lisbon was commonly seen, about half the time with very complex arms in the centre. These municipal flags were more usually flown from stand-alone poles at street corners than from buildings.
Vincent Morley, 09 Oct 1999

The “civil” municipal flag of Lisbon is white over black gyronny, with no coat of arms.
António Martins, 15 Apr 1998

The Lisbon City Museum (Palácio Pimenta, Campo Grande) hoists every day an upside down flag for ages!
António Martins, 15 Jul 1999

Lisbon is one of the municipalities of the Lisbon district (old province of Estremadura), covering 84 km² in 53 communes where live 629 670 inhabitants (1992 data).
António Martins, 15 Apr 1998

Ginásio Clube Português is a Lisbon sports club, and it flies this flag in its headquarters (between Rato and Amoreiras) every sunday along with the national and UE flags (sometimes they had all three poles with club flags, I guess it was when they’re helding competitions or something). The flag consists of the logo of the club (approx. ¹/₂ of the height) on a white background with the portuguese national flag in a small canton (approx. ¹/₃rd × ¹/₃rd). Adolf Duran shows this flag on his article [drn92] but with a wrongly simplified logo.
António Martins, 23 Jul 1999