Did Eiffel design the Santa Justa Lift? The myth of Eiffel's disciple

Who designed the Santa Justa Lift?

Mesnier du Ponsard. The Centro Nacional de Cultura's inventory calls it his masterpiece and describes it as a piece of iron architecture in the Gothic Revival style: a metal tower with the trimmings of a Gothic cathedral. It runs from Rua do Ouro, in the Baixa, to Largo do Carmo, and spares you the climb.

It opened on 10 July 1902. To begin with it ran on steam, and in November 1907 it was fitted with electric motors. In Lisbon it's also known as the Elevador do Carmo, after the square it takes you to.

Who was Raoul Mesnier du Ponsard?

There's very little legend in his life story and a great deal of hard work. He was born in Porto into a family of French origin. He went to secondary school there and then studied mathematics and philosophy at Coimbra, both degrees at the same time. Since what he really wanted was to become a mechanical engineer, he trained in France, Germany and Switzerland. In Switzerland he did a placement with the firm of Nikolaus Riggenbach, an engineer famous for his mountain lifts.

Back in Portugal, he was responsible for the Bom Jesus lift in Braga, which opened in 1884: the first lift of its type in the Iberian Peninsula. In Porto came the Guindais lift, which climbed up from the Ribeira; an accident shut it down after two years. And in Lisbon he built one hillside lift after another: Lavra in 1884, which carried more than three thousand passengers on its first, free day; Glória in 1885; Bica in 1892. He even found time to invent a calculating machine, the Aritmotecno.

Santa Justa, in 1902, was the high point of that career.

Was Mesnier a disciple of Eiffel?

There's no evidence that he was. The company that runs the lift credits it to Mesnier without a word about Eiffel, and so does the Chiado inventory. A feature on Lisbon's lifts in the Portuguese daily Observador goes further: it says that, contrary to what people claim, Mesnier wasn't Eiffel's disciple but Riggenbach's.

It's worth being precise. The fact that the sources we've read don't mention Eiffel doesn't prove the two men never met. What we can say is that we haven't found a single document that makes Mesnier his pupil. And a story with no paperwork shouldn't be told as fact.

Why do people say Eiffel built it?

We don't know how the myth began, so what follows is a reasonable explanation, not a fact.

The look. It's a tall, airy, elegant tower of riveted iron, and for a lot of people late nineteenth-century ironwork has only one surname. The Observador feature says as much in passing: he wasn't Eiffel's disciple, despite the neo-Gothic style of his iron architecture.

The French surname. Mesnier du Ponsard sounds like Paris, even though the man himself came from Porto.

Eiffel did leave his mark on Portugal. In 1877 the Eiffel firm finished the Maria Pia Bridge in Porto, the railway bridge that, according to Portugal's national railway company, made the firm known around the world. With one genuine Eiffel in the country, it was easy to hand him a few more.

And the trick works. Borrow a celebrated surname for a local landmark, and hardly anyone stops to check.

The same myth in Porto

Exactly the same thing happens in Porto with the Dom Luís I Bridge, the great two-level iron arch over the Douro: people say it's by Eiffel, when it was designed by Théophile Seyrig, his former partner. And here coincidence closes the circle. Right beside that bridge, running alongside the old city wall, is the Guindais funicular, Mesnier's work. The engineer behind Santa Justa, the man supposedly trained by Eiffel, worked in the shadow of another bridge credited to Eiffel.

One question to bust a myth

The free Baixa route uses a simple test for stories like these: was there a witness, or have we only been told? Santa Justa is the walk's first myth. The second is waiting further on, perched on a column in the Rossio, and it involves an emperor.

Fact or legend.

• Fact: the Santa Justa Lift is the work of Raoul Mesnier du Ponsard. It opened on 10 July 1902, ran on steam and switched to electric motors in 1907.
• Fact: Mesnier was born in Porto to a French family, trained in France, Germany and Switzerland, and did a placement with Nikolaus Riggenbach.
• Myth with no evidence: that he was Eiffel's disciple. Neither the operator nor the heritage inventory mentions it, and we haven't found any document that supports it.
• Podtour's hypothesis: the myth rests on the ironwork, the French surname and the fame of the Maria Pia Bridge, a genuine Eiffel-firm project in Porto.

Where to hear it

Podtour tells this story on its free Lisbon route, Lisbon's Baixa: from Terreiro do Paço to the Rossio, eleven stops from the quay at Terreiro do Paço to the Rossio. You'll hear it on Rua do Ouro, at the stop "The tower Eiffel didn't build", and the second myth at "An emperor in Rossio?". If you'd like to compare formats, here's our free self-guided walking tour of Lisbon, and for the practical side of your trip, see our Lisbon guide.

Further reading

• Carris, "Elevador de Santa Justa", lift fleet page (in Portuguese). https://www.carris.pt/descubra/frota/elevador/
• Centro Nacional de Cultura, e-Chiado, "Elevador de Santa Justa" (in Portuguese). https://www.e-chiado.pt/patrimonio/elevador-de-santa-justa/
• Cláudia Marques Santos, "Elevador da Glória: quando o 'formosíssimo espectáculo' foi inaugurado e encantou Lisboa há 140 anos", Observador, 6 September 2025 (in Portuguese). https://observador.pt/especiais/elevador-da-gloria-quando-o-formosissimo-espectaculo-foi-inaugurado-e-encantou-lisboa-ha-140-anos/
• CP – Comboios de Portugal, "A Ponte Maria Pia" (in Portuguese). https://www.cp.pt/info/w/institucional/a-ponte-maria-pia