Praça João Lisboa, Heritage square in downtown São Luís, Brazil

Praça João Lisboa is a heritage-listed square in downtown São Luís featuring a bronze monument on a marble base sculpted by French artist Jean Magrou. The space displays traditional Portuguese mosaic pavement with metamorphic patterns and has undergone recent comprehensive restoration work.

This location once served as São Luís's first public market and witnessed conflict between Dutch and Portuguese forces in 1643. Its early role as a central meeting ground shaped the plaza's importance in the city's development.

The square's name, adopted in 1901, honours the journalist and writer João Francisco Lisboa, patron of chair no. 11 of the Maranhão Academy of Letters. His ashes rest in the bronze monument on a marble pedestal made by French sculptor Jean Magrou and inaugurated in 1918. The site also hosted the city's first public shelter and a pelourinho, pulled down after the Proclamation of the Republic.

The square sits in the historic centre of São Luís, near the Carmo convent and church that gave it its old name, Largo do Carmo. It is reached on foot from the surrounding streets of the centre; the bronze monument and marble pedestal stand in the open and can be seen at any hour.

During restoration work, crews discovered original streetcar tracks from the first half of the twentieth century buried beneath the ground surface. These hidden remains reveal how the plaza once connected to the city's early transport network.