A Brasileira do Chiado
I carry within me all the dreams of the world.
Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935)
A Brasileira is the beating heart of Chiado – a literary, architectural and artistic landmark that transcends generations and remains faithful to the charm and elegance of another era. More than one of Lisbon’s oldest cafés, it is its most iconic. A space where the city’s memory is served at the table, and where a coffee – a bica – still invites a pause and a conversation, under the silent gaze of Fernando Pessoa.
History of A Brasileira
Inaugurated on November 19, 1905, in the heart of Chiado, A Brasileira was born where once stood a shirtmaker’s shop. It was founded by Adriano Soares Telles do Valle (1859 – 1932), a native of Alvarenga, who had left for Brazil in 1872, where he married the daughter of one of the largest coffee producers in the Minas Gerais region, becoming a renowned farmer, merchant and man of culture.
Back in Portugal in 1898 due to his wife’s health issues, Adriano Telles brought with him the coffee business and the desire to introduce Brazilian coffee to the Portuguese public, who were used to African coffee and found Brazilian coffee too bitter. Adriano Telles built a network of A Brasileira cafés in Porto, Coimbra, Braga, Seville and, of course, Lisbon – in Rossio and Chiado – where he served coffee by the cup for free to anyone who bought other products, helping to demystify Brazilians’ taste for coffee. This pioneering and visionary move quickly created habits and gave rise to a new ritual.
From the very beginning, A Brasileira stood out for the refinement of its architecture. Designed by architect Manuel Norte Júnior, the façade and interior decoration followed the Parisian taste of the time. It was a space of elegance, designed to welcome those who shaped the city: lawyers, doctors, teachers, artists and writers gathered here, as well as many of the leading figures in the establishment of the Republic.
Menu
Since 1905, A Brasileira has been synonymous with coffee – not only as a drink, but as a gesture, a habit, and a meeting point in Portuguese culture.
True to the vision of its founder, Adriano Telles, the coffee served at A Brasileira maintains its connection to its origins: carefully selected beans, with special emphasis on those from Brazil, where the knowledge of cultivation and roasting results in an exclusive blend, with deep aroma and balanced sweetness. The menu invites you to savour time. From breakfast on the terrace, to classic dishes like the Bife à Brasileira – a favourite of Fernando Pessoa – and traditional pastries, everything is intertwined with coffee.
Fernando Pessoa
(1888-1935)
Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa was born in Lisbon on June 13, 1888. The early death of his father, when he was only five years old, marked his childhood and shaped an introspective personality, where silence and imagination became a refuge.
At seven years old, he accompanied his family to Durban, South Africa, where he lived for nine years. It was there that he received an English education and absorbed the culture he would later blend with Portuguese tradition. He returned to Lisbon in 1905 – the same year A Brasileira settled in Chiado – bringing with him a rare sensitivity, born of exile and clarity.
Fernando Pessoa became a regular presence at A Brasileira. He chose the quietest corners, where he read, wrote, and observed. There, he found not only coffee but a refuge, a place for listening and reflection. Between a “bica” and a few words of conversation, many of his texts were born – and the poet’s transformation into one of the greatest figures of literary modernity took place.
Pessoa created more than a hundred pseudonyms, alter egos, and above all, heteronyms – fully developed personalities, each with their own biography, ideology, profession, and voice. Among them were writers, astrologers, doctors, monks, and philosophers. This fragmentation became the most original and unsettling aspect of his work.
Address and Contacts
Rua Garrett, 120/122, 1200-205 Lisboa
+351 213 469 541
(Call to the national fixed phone network)