Café A Brasileira, Pessoa Statue & Largo do Chiado
Why is it significant?
At a bronze café table on the pavement sits a thin man in a hat and bow tie, legs crossed, with an empty chair beside him that is almost never empty for long. This is Fernando Pessoa, cast by the sculptor Lagoa Henriques in 1988 for the centenary of his birth, outside the café A Brasileira.
Key Facts
| Place | Café A Brasileira, Pessoa Statue & Largo do Chiado |
|---|---|
| Address | Rua Garrett 120, 1200-273 Lisboa, Portugal |
| Geo Coordinates | 38.71070, -9.14200 |
| Part of Walk | Pessoa's Lisbon: Poets, Bookshops and Lookouts of Chiado & Bairro Alto |
| Generated | Generated |
At a bronze café table on the pavement sits a thin man in a hat and bow tie, legs crossed, with an empty chair beside him that is almost never empty for long. This is Fernando Pessoa, cast by the sculptor Lagoa Henriques in 1988 for the centenary of his birth, outside the café A Brasileira.
A Brasileira opened in 1905 to sell coffee from Brazil, and its owner, Adriano Telles, is said to have given a free cup to anyone who bought a bag of beans. Lisbon got the taste for the short, strong espresso it still calls a bica. There is a cheerful legend that the word stands for beba isto com açúcar, drink this with sugar. Linguists are sceptical, but every waiter in Chiado will tell it to you anyway.
In 1915 the café's regulars launched a magazine called Orpheu. It ran for two issues, scandalised the newspapers, and started Portuguese modernism. Pessoa, the poet Mário de Sá-Carneiro and the painter Almada Negreiros were at its heart. And Pessoa was never only Pessoa. He wrote as Alberto Caeiro, a shepherd of plain things; Ricardo Reis, a classical doctor; and Álvaro de Campos, a naval engineer in love with machines... complete poets with their own biographies, styles and quarrels with one another.
When he died in 1935, aged forty-seven, he had published only one book of poems in Portuguese. He left behind a trunk holding more than twenty-five thousand pages, and scholars are still sorting through it. His last written words were in English: I know not what tomorrow will bring.
A few steps away, in Largo do Chiado, stands a seated friar with an open mouth, mid-joke. That is António Ribeiro, a sixteenth century poet and satirist nicknamed o Chiado, and one theory says the whole district is named after him. Now cross into the larger square just west of here, to the poet who outranks them all.