The Great Lisbon Earthquake, Tsunami, and Fire

Date

1 November 1755

Category

Environment & climate

Region

Europe

Era

Early Modern

Significance

On the morning of Saturday, 1 November 1755, the Feast of All Saints, a massive earthquake estimated at magnitude 7.7 or greater struck off the coast of Portugal, with its epicentre in the Atlantic Ocean southwest of Cape St. Vincent.

The shaking, which lasted several minutes and opened wide fissures across the city centre, was followed roughly forty minutes later by a tsunami that surged up the Tagus River and inundated Lisbon's harbour and downtown, while fires ignited by overturned All Saints' Day candles raged for days and destroyed much of what remained. An estimated 30,000 to 40,000 people died in Lisbon alone, with total casualties across Portugal, Spain, and Morocco often placed in the tens of thousands, and around 85 percent of the city's buildings were destroyed. Reconstruction was directed by the chief minister Sebastiao Jose de Carvalho e Melo, the future Marquis of Pombal, whose rebuilt Pombaline Lower Town introduced some of the earliest earthquake-resistant building techniques. The catastrophe is widely regarded as a foundational event in the birth of modern seismology and as a profound shock to Enlightenment thought, prompting Voltaire's satire of philosophical optimism in Candide and Immanuel Kant's naturalistic analyses of the disaster's causes.

Empires active in 1 November 1755

• Spanish Empire
  1492 CE – 1976 CE
• British Empire
  1583 CE – 1997 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE – 1999 CE
• Russian Empire
  1721 CE – 1917 CE
• Dutch Empire
  1581 CE – 1975 CE
• Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
  1569 CE – 1795 CE

Related environment & climate events

• Laki Fissure Eruption and the Mist Hardships Famine
  8 June 1783 – 7 February 1784
• Great Bengal Famine of 1770
  1769–1770
• Doji bara (Skull) Famine and the Great El Nino of 1789-1793
  1791-1792 (drought from 1789)
• 1556 Shaanxi Earthquake
  January 23, 1556
• Deforestation and Ecological Transformation of Rapa Nui (Easter Island)
  c. 1600 CE
• Eruption of Huaynaputina
  19 February 1600

Further reading

This Gulf of Fire: The Great Lisbon Earthquake, or Apocalypse in the Age of Science and Reason

If you read one book

This Gulf of Fire: The Great Lisbon Earthquake, or Apocalypse in the Age of Science and Reason

Mark Molesky

Vivid account of the 1755 disaster and its intellectual aftershocks.

Get it on Amazon →

Also worth reading

• Wrath of God: The Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 — Edward PaiceAmazon →

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