gloria funicular

The Gloria Funicular: Lisbon’s Vertical Escalator to the Human Condition
By our Special Correspondent, still waiting for the elevator to self-respect

If you stand at the foot of Calçada da Glória on any given afternoon, you will witness a tableau so perfectly absurd it could be commissioned by the United Nations as a cautionary exhibit. Tourists clutch €3.70 in exact change like communion wafers, locals feign nonchalance while secretly timing the ascent, and a graffiti-splashed tram grunts up a 17 percent grade with the enthusiasm of a hung-over donkey. Welcome to Lisbon’s Ascensor da Glória, the world’s most charmingly decrepit metaphor for late-stage capitalism—now with vintage brass fittings and a UNESCO patina.

Opened in 1885, the Gloria funicular predates the airplane, the zipper, and most contemporary democracies. It was built to spare the bourgeoisie of Príncipe Real the indignity of climbing hills on foot, a mission statement that has aged like Beaujolais in a subway station. In 2024, its two lemon-yellow carriages still shuttle 4.5 million passengers a year—roughly the population of New Zealand—between Restauradores and Bairro Alto, proving that humanity will queue for anything so long as it spares us the cardio.

Globally, the Gloria is part of a shrinking club of funiculars that survive not because they are efficient—they average 8 km/h, or “continental-drift adjacent”—but because Instagram has made nostalgia a currency more stable than the euro. From Valparaíso’s ascensores to Pittsburgh’s Monongahela Incline, these hillside elevators have become soft-power assets: a way for cities to say, “We once built infrastructure that didn’t actively disappoint you.” The Chinese, ever alert to soft-power arbitrage, have already commissioned a replica Gloria for a theme park in Shenzhen where the incline is gentler and the existential dread is outsourced to staff in period costumes.

The European Union, never one to miss a branding opportunity, has slapped the Gloria with both World Heritage status and a €2.3 million restoration grant, ensuring the tram will continue to wheeze uphill long after the glaciers have quit. Brussels calls it “cultural mobility”; the rest of us call it subsidized cosplay for urban millennials. Meanwhile, the carbon footprint per passenger remains stubbornly higher than walking, proving that sustainability is whatever you can still hashtag without blushing.

What makes the Gloria internationally instructive is its microcosmic honesty. Inside, there is no pretence of social distancing; strangers press together like mismatched socks in a hostel dryer. Outside, souvenir hawkers sell knock-off tram magnets to people who will forget Lisbon before the jet-lagged hallucinations fade. The entire operation runs on the same business model as most modern states: raise prices, defer maintenance, and hope the view distracts from the grinding gears beneath.

And yet, cynicism is only half the story. At dusk, when the sodium lights flicker on and the city below glitters like spilled champagne, the Gloria achieves a kind of grace. For three minutes you are suspended between earth and sky, between history and whatever comes after it. The couple behind you is arguing in three languages; the teenager filming TikTok has tears in his eyes; the conductor whistles a fado that predates the Salazar regime. Nobody is looking at their phone, because even the algorithm knows when to shut up.

In that moment, the Gloria is no longer a tram but a referendum on whether anything built by humans can outlast the embarrassment of being human. The answer, like the ride, is short, shaky, and improbably beautiful. When the carriage clangs to a halt at the top and the doors wheeze open, you step onto cobblestones polished smooth by centuries of people who thought they were going somewhere.

You realize you still are. Just slightly higher, and with marginally less dignity.