In the Museu da Cidade in Lisbon, there is a meticulous model of Lisbon prior to the 1755 earthquake, made by Ticiano Violante under the guidance of Gustavo de Matos Sequeira, a specialist in Lisbon’s history. The power of this reconstruction of a mythical past is outweighed only by the force that cast us into the chasm of the irretrievable. It epitomises the ambivalence inherent to many representations of cities: on the one hand, a salvaging of historical facts designed to reconstitute a particular point among the different sedimentations of the urban space, thus facilitating future investigations; on the other hand, the dark presence of destructive forces.