House Museum
Amália’s wish
In the nr. 193 of the Street of São Bento, in Lisbon, we live the essence of fado, in the house where once Amália Rodrigues – the Voice of Portugal – lived for 44 years.
The House Museum Amália Rodrigues was inaugured on July 23rd of 2001, fulfilling one of Amália’s wishes: to open her house to the public and share, with it, her most personal and intimate side. In fact, here, we do a true voyage to Amália Rodrigues’ life and we recreate her day-to-day life: it is possible to see her dresses and stage jewellery, her balandraus that she wore at home, and other personal objects, her awards, and honours, her memories…
Each piece, from the black shawl to the guitars over the piano, materializes her presence and tells the history of the Lisbon song, which defines the Portuguese spirit and even the own History of a people.
In this House Museum, everything reveals us the touch and spirit of her Founder, either in the kitchen of the 50s, in the garden full of flowers at Amália’s taste, in her parrot “Chico”, and in the famous salon, where she gathered with the most distinguished figures of the culture of the 20th century (poets, musicians, composers, painters) and where she recorded, in 1968, an album with Vinicius de Moraes.
Explore here some of the House Museum spaces.
The House Museum is open from Tuesday to Sunday (10 a.m. to 06 p.m.), and hosts fado sessions weekly (Saturdays). In the Museum shop, the visitor can find a souvenir of his passing through the House of Amália.
Brief description of the building
It is a pre-pombaline* building, aligned with the street, inserted in a plot of around 415 m2, where 200 m2 corresponds to the implantation and the rest to a garden patio.
The house has four levels, being the ground floor the entrance one, the first and second floors occupied with the principal program of the visit of the House Museum, and the attic space for museum reserves and storage. The garden, without direct access through the street, is on a level between the ground floor and the first floor.
The construction is traditional with a mixed constructive system of exterior walls of stone and brick masonry, mixed masonry interior walls and wooden bulkheads, wooden floors, and ceilings, except for the ground floor. The two-water roof consists of the wooden frame and tile-coated type Marseille. Vertical communications are conducted by stairs.
The current distribution keeps unchanged the occupation left by its owner, Amália, and corresponds to the circuit that can be visited by the public, which thus shares its proximity and intimacy when visiting the hall and the dining room on the first floor, or the rooms and halls on the upper floor, with all the furniture and the original decoration untouchable – as if from a crystallized time and as if the presence of our host could materialize itself. The largest transformation was carried out on the ground floor of access, where it is we attend and welcome our visitors, and where we have a store space, cafeteria, sanitary facilities, and rooms of the services of the Foundation.
The garden, accessed by stairs from the ground floor, maintains its formal design of origin, with vases involving the perimeter of the high walls that surround it with creepers and shrubs occupying the shade of the pergolas and two central trees that stand out. In her time, the garden was connected to the kitchen and to the dining room balcony, which does not happen in the normal visit of the House Museum nowadays.
It is being considered a refurbishment of the House Museum, to preserve and requalify its legacy and material collections, focused on conservation, safety, comfort, and accessibility, to fulfill its present and future mission for the many and diverse audiences who want to visit and enjoy it, without altering the core of the house where her memory is best shaped.
*architectural Portuguese style of the 18th century, named after the first marquis of Pombal, who played an important role in the reconstruction of Lisbon after the earthquake of 1755.
