HUNDREDS OF tourists and pedestrians might have been forgiven for thinking they had stepped into a time machine on Friday last week.
Praça do Comércio in Lisbon had been transformed into the fashions, sights and sounds of the early 20th century.
Gone were cars, trams, taxis and modern kiosks, in came horse drawn traps, carriages, men in black top hats and women in tight-fitting Edwardian day dresses.
The year was 1908 and the event, which was faithfully being recreated for a new television drama, was the assassination, or regicide, of King Carlos of Portugal and the heir to the throne Crown Prince Luís Filipe.
The famous Lisbon square was off-limits for the first day of filming of Dia do Regicídio (The Day of the Regicide) which was being shot in exactly the same place where the King and his heir were assassinated on February 1, 1908.
Gathered in the square were 110 actors dressed in period costume to represent the public that 99 years ago would have viewed the passing royal family as the film stars of their day.
Among them was the actor Ricardo Aibéo who plays the assassin Manuel Buica who with a gun hidden beneath his coat was waiting within the crowd for the best moment to emerge and shoot the king.
The dramatic scene is the most important of a series of events being filmed for the RTP mini-series historical drama that is to be televised on the 100th anniversary of the regicide, on February 1, 2008.
At the same time that scenes were being shot for the mini-series, shots in a cinema format were also being filmed for a feature film of the same name to commemorate the regicide.
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