A Brasileira do Chiado will host events from July onwards, resuming its cultural mission and as a meeting point for the city of Lisbon and Fernando Pessoa’s spetacles will be on permanent exhibition in A Brasileira do Chiado

With 115 years of history, A Brasileira café is a unique place in Lisbon, with a rich cultural heritage of national relevance. A Brasileira is one of the oldest and only of three cafés in Lisbon that remained open throughout the 20th century. It was classified in 1997 as property of public interest by the General Council of Cultural Heritage.

When the 132nd anniversary of Fernando Pessoa’s birth is celebrated, A Brasileira do Chiado pays tribute to the most universal of Portuguese poets, through the public presentation of the poet’s spectacles, donated by the Bread Museum, of whose estate they are part. The spectacles will now be exhibited in A Brasileira café, and this will be another link to the poet whose widely photographed statue already perpetuated them. The public will thus have closer contact with a rare and curious object very personal to the master of literature – which defined his famous image.

Debates about Lisbon starting on July 2
On July 2nd A Brasileira will resume its mission of debate and thought, this time about the city of Lisbon. Under the motto “Lisboa de Volta” (Lisbon back) the future of the city after covid-19 will be discussed. Also what changes the city will experience and what changes we will witness. The debates will be curated by the journalist Catarina Carvalho.

The first debate will be attended by the Mayor of Lisbon, Fernando Medina, on 2 July, at 6pm, and will feature a group of personalities whose life and experience links to the city.

Although the debate will take place at the Café in Chiado, safety and health regulations prevent the presence of the public, who may watch it live on Sapo.pt channel and shared on Brasileira’s Facebook page, at https://www.facebook.com/AbrasileiraDoChiado. The presence of the press is allowed, provided it is organised in advance.

This series of six debates dedicated to the city goes through the letters of the word Lisboa taking inspiration from them for the themes L- Lisboa, I-innovation, S-health (in Portuguese “saúde”), B-bicycles, O-olyssipo, A-arts. The debates will take place every Thursday afternoon (and if the rules change they may be open to the public, reviving the tradition of the café’s gatherings).

The series of debates will result in a manifesto of six ideas for a (re)new(ed) city. Upcoming guests include the Mayor of Pontevedra Miguel Anxo Lores, the Administrator of Gulbenkian and former European Commissioner, historian Rui Tavares and immunologist Henrique Veiga Fernandes.

In a tribute to the past, and reaffirming its history, A Brasileira restores cultural dynamics to the city of Lisbon, paying tribute to the many gatherings of intellectuals, artists and writers that used to bring together names such as Almada Negreiros, Santa-Rita Pintor and Mário de Sá Carneiro, who were joined by Fernando Pessoa.

Besides, of course, the genuine coffee – not forgetting that it was here that the expression “bica” was born. A moment not to be missed on the return to city life and cultural events at A Brasileira do Chiado.

About A Brasileira do Chiado
Opened on November 19, 1905, in Chiado, A Brasileira was created by Adriano Telles, a former Portuguese immigrant in Brazil. With the freedom achieved in the period following the implantation of the republic in 1910, and due to its privileged location, A Brasileira do Chiado became one of the most popular cafés in Lisbon at the time and was the setting for countless intellectual, artistic and literary gatherings. Renowned writers and artists like Fernando Pessoa and Almada Negreiros found in A Brasileira do Chiado the inspiration for paradoxical concepts and ideas. It was in A Brasileira do Chiado that the expression “bica” was created, which would be the abbreviation for “drink this with sugar” (in Portuguese “beba isto com açúcar”), an incentive to make coffee (a novelty at that time), more pleasant for customers, while creating them a habit and marking a ritual.

A Brasileira do Chiado has kept its identity intact, both due to the specificity of its decoration and the symbolism it represents as it is linked to intellectual circles. Classified as a building of public interest since 1997, it is today one of the oldest and one of only three cafés in Lisbon that have remained open throughout the 20th century. A Brasileira do Chiado has always been a truly iconic spot of the city of Lisbon, earning its place among the most emblematic places in Chiado, as one of the most visited and photographed in the entire city.

The Brasileira do Chiado is a brand of the Value of Time Group, since March 2020.

www.abrasileira.pt