Lisboa Centro

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On  March  1st,  Casa  Fernando  Pessoa,  at  Rua  Coelho  da  Rocha  nº  16, will close its doors,  reopening them later this year,  more  accessible to all visitors and showcasing a  new museography project which will grant wider access to the writer’s estate.

+ info: https://casafernandopessoa.pt

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Visit the home of the greatest Portuguese literary genius of the 20th century in one of the most iconic bairros of Lisbon.

The Casa Fernando Pessoa, in Campo de Ourique, is a cultural centre where book presentations, talks, debates, conferences and exhibitions are held. From children to scholars, everyone comes to meet the writer whose talent was so great a single name couldn’t contain it.

And this is where you’ll find the original writing table where he invented his many alter egos, as well as many other personal objects such as his typewriter, glasses and books. In fact, his private library has so many books that they have all been digitalised and can be consulted online. After taking a guided or themed tour, you can recharge your batteries with something to eat at the excellent restaurant.

The traditional Portuguese food served does justice to the poet’s work and the wine list accompanies the style.

And if you haven’t yet read it, take a copy of the Book of Disquiet with you. It’s essential reading.

This house, winner of the 1905 Valmor Architecture Award and the former Studio of the painter José Malhoa, was purchased in 1932 by the ophthalmologist and art collector Dr António Anastácio Gonçalves (1888-1965), who used the house to display his impressive collection, which he wished to bestow to the State.

The collection includes a wide variety of objects, in particular Portuguese 19th century naturalist paintings and decorative art pieces, highlighted by an exquisite collection of Chinese porcelain.

Visitors to this house-museum can view the collections in the welcoming and day-to-day ambience of a house that is also a museum.

Besides the display, study and preservation of the permanent collection, the house-museum offers guided thematic visits and artistic expression workshops to foster life-long art learning experiences.

The house-museum also features free concerts, colloquiums and conferences.

The Arpad Szenes-Vieira da Silva Foundation was created to study and to diffuse the knowledge of Vieira da Silva work, one of the most outstanding in the 20th century, as well as her husband work, Arpad Szenes. Based in a way to give a time/ historical and esthetical frame to the art of these two artists, the Foundation presents, regularly, temporary exhibitions from other artists, national and international, who lived or shared with them artistics affinities. The museum program also aims to give a place to Arpad Szenes and Vieira da Silva’s work in the panorama of national and international art.

From 1911, the year in which it was founded, the Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea – Museu do Chiado was based in the former convent of São Francisco da Cidade, a complex that had been severely damaged by the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. However, following a fire that tore through the area in 1988, the museum was renovated and extended under the direction of the French architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte, and re-inaugurated in 1994. The MNAC is a must-see for those wanting to learn about and enjoy Portuguese romantic, naturalist, modern and contemporary art, in the form of seminal pieces from the leading art movements from the second half of the 19th century to the present day. The temporary exhibitions programme forms an important part of the museum’s activity, which also includes guided tours, conferences, seminars and concerts alongside learning projects developed by the education service.

Its vast collection includes objects of rare artistic, anthropological, and scientific value, describing a journey, where each civilization is portrayed under a narrative of disease-fighting and the seeking of healing and pain relief, since the first traces of life on earth until today, passing through cultures and civilizations as distinct in time and place as Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Incas, the Aztecs, Islam, Africa, Tibet, China, Japan, among others.

From an Egyptian sarcophagus, where hopes for eternal life were deposit, to the black plague doctor suit, as a symbol of the struggle against one of the greatest pandemics in history, the objects that make up the collection of the Health and Pharmacy Museum in Lisbon are distinct and unique.

A journey that, although it started in prehistory, it is still being built today on the testimonies that now reach us from the “future”, such as portable pharmacies and first aid kits used by NASA astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour.