named Calouste Gulbenkian. One of the first to appreciate the potential of Middle East oil, Gulbenkian amassed a fortune in the early 20th century.
He settled in neutral Lisbon in 1942 to escape WWII. When he died 13 years later, Gulbenkian thanked his adopted homeland by leaving much of his wealth to a foundation to promote culture, education, and science. Located in a one of Lisbon’s loveliest gardens, the Gulbenkian Foundation remains a driving force behind the arts. Its concert halls offer some of the city’s best classical, jazz, and world music.
The Gulbenkian Museum is a must-see attraction housing the tycoon’s wonderfully diverse collection—from ancient Egyptian statuary to French Impressionist masterpieces, fine Ming vases to exquisite Persian rugs. Its collection of Fabergé jewelry is dazzling. The modern art museum at the Gulbenkian showcases Portuguese and international works from the 20th and 21st centuries.
Industrialization was slow coming to Portugal, but building the railroads created a network of stations decorated with exquisitely painted azulejo tiles. The stations in Aveiro, the Douro wine town of Pinhão, and São Bento in Porto are among the prettiest. The railway also graced Porto with a magnificent iron bridge over the Douro. The Maria Pia Bridge (p. 347) was built in 1877 by a French engineer named Gustave Eiffel, who went on to build a certain tower in Paris. At the time, it was the world’s longest single-arch bridge. Nine years later, a colleague of Eiffel’s built an even longer span just next door: the double-decker Dom Luís I Bridge. Portugal’s other great iron structure of the Industrial Age is the Santa Justa Elevator, a startling 13-meter (43-ft.) tower that offers vertical transportation between Lisbon’s downtown and the chic shops of the Chiado district.
Despite political turmoil and economic decline, the arts flourished in the 19th century. Talented naturalist painters included José Malhoa (1855–1933), best known for his depictions of fado singers and boozers in Lisbon taverns, and Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro (1856–1929), arguably Portugal’s greatest painter, whose impressionistic portraits captured intellectual life in the capital. Columbano’s dandyish brother, Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro (1846–1905), a sculptor, created fantastical ceramic works that range from plates and bowls decorated with animal and plant motifs to comic figurines caricaturing figures of the day. His works remain hugely popular and are still produced in the factory he built in Caldas da Rainha.
20th Century The most influential figure in Portuguese modern art was Amadeo de Souza Cardoso (1887–1918), a daring figure who painted bold, bright canvases, flirting with cubism, futurism, and abstraction. Souza Cardoso was cut down young by the Spanish flu epidemic, but international interest in his work was revived in 2016 by a major exhibition in Paris.
Other 20th-century giants in Portuguese art include José de Almada Negreiros (1889–1970), a non-conformist much influenced by the Italian futurist movement; and Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (1908–92), who worked mostly in Paris. She was the first woman to be awarded France’s Grand Prix National des Arts. Her abstract works recall Portuguese azulejos, endless libraries, and the winding alleys of Lisbon.
During the early years of the Salazar dictatorship, architecture was much influenced by the grandiose ideas emanating from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, although softened by a Portuguese touch recalling the country’s medieval or maritime past. Modern extensions to Coimbra University, the Monument to the Discoveries jutting into the river at Belém, and the Praça Francisco Sá Carneiro in Lisbon showcase the Estado Novo style.
Later, the Porto School of Architecture produced a crop of designers whose cool, modernist buildings have won worldwide acclaim. Álvaro Siza Vieira (b. 1933) is the best known. His clean white cubic buildings grace cities around the world. Work started on the 85-year-old’s first New York City skyscraper in 2019. In Portugal, his landmark buildings include the Serralves contemporary art museum in Porto and the Portuguese Pavilion in Lisbon’s Parque das Nações district. Eduardo Souto de Moura (b. 1952) is a fellow winner of the Pritzker Prize, considered architecture’s “Nobel.” The soccer stadium in Braga carved into the rock walls of a quarry is among his most distinctive works.
Contrasting with the geometric purity favored by the Porto School, Lisbon architect Tomás Taveira (b. 1938) made an eye-catching contribution to the capital’s skyline in the early 1980s with his giant Amoreiras shopping and residential center, whose oddly shaped towers in pink, black, and silver are monuments to then-trendy postmodern style.
Art Today The arts scene today is thriving. Contemporary works are showcased in important new galleries like the Berardo Museum (see p. 110) in Lisbon’s Belém district, the Serralves (p. 343) center in Porto, and the MAAT museum (p. 107) that opened in the fall of 2016.
Joana Vasconcelos (b. 1971) is perhaps the contemporary artist who has gained most international recognition, after three appearances at the Venice Biennale. She uses colorful textiles, crochet, and lacework to cover and distort familiar Portuguese objects, from ceramic shellfish to a Tagus riverboat.
Paula Rego (b. 1935) divides her time between London and Cascais, where there’s a museum designed by Souto de Moura is dedicated to her work. Her paintings often reflect a sinister, fairytale world populated by powerful, muscular women.
Lately, Lisbon has gained a reputation as a center of graffiti art, including towering works covering abandoned apartment blocks that greet visitors on the way into town along Avenida Fontes Pereira de Melo. Vhils (b. 1983) is Portugal’s most renowned urban artist. His haunting portraits carved into the side of buildings have sprung up around the world from San Diego to Sydney, Beijing to Bogota, as well as locations around Lisbon.
Books
The ideal literary companion to a visit to Portugal is a guide by the country’s only Nobel Prize in Literature winner, José Saramago. In 1979, Saramago set out on a meandering drive from north to south seeking the soul of his homeland’s history and culture. His Journey to Portugal is an intimate, highly personal portrait that reaches into the lives of the Portuguese people.
For an up-to-date survey, The Portuguese: A Modern History by the Associated Press Lisbon correspondent Barry Hatton looks at how history has shaped today’s Portugal. The country’s love of soccer, the significance of fado, and the importance of good eating are all included in this excellent introduction.
History
Before his death in 2012 at the age of 92, José Hermano Saraiva was Portugal’s best-known historian, a familiar face to millions thanks to his TV series on the country’s past. Saraiva’s Portugal: A Companion History provides a sweeping saga of the land you’re about to visit.
A Concise History of Portugal by David Birmingham is a readable, short overview, while Malyn Newitt’s Portugal in European and World History puts the story in the wider international context. Hatton’s latest book Queen of the Sea is a highly readable history of Lisbon, packed with intriguing details, from the career of the black matador who wowed the bullrings of Spain, to the cavorting of the kings who kept harems in a Lisbon convent.
A wide range of books focuses on Portugal’s Age of Discovery. Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire by Roger Crowley is a rip-roaring account of Portugal’s expansion into the Indian Ocean, which isn’t shy in portraying the brutality of the early colonial enterprise. Indian historian Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s The Portuguese Empire in Asia presents an epic alternative to Eurocentric views of the Discoveries.
For gripping accounts of great voyages, try The Last Crusade: The Epic Voyages of Vasco Da Gama by Nigel Cliff, or Over the Edge of the World:
