Igreja de São Cristóvão & the Fado Vadio Mural
Why is it significant?
In front of you stands the Igreja de São Cristóvão, a plain, solid church on a sloping square, and beside it a stairway whose wall has been turned into one long painted story. Climb a few steps slowly and read it like a comic strip, because that is very nearly what it is.
Key Facts
| Place | Igreja de São Cristóvão & the Fado Vadio Mural |
|---|---|
| Address | Largo de São Cristóvão, 1100-179 Lisboa, Portugal |
| Geo Coordinates | 38.71280, -9.13560 |
| Part of Walk | Mouraria, Cradle of Fado: From Maria Severa to Amália in Lisbon |
| Generated | Generated |
In front of you stands the Igreja de São Cristóvão, a plain, solid church on a sloping square, and beside it a stairway whose wall has been turned into one long painted story. Climb a few steps slowly and read it like a comic strip, because that is very nearly what it is.
The mural was painted by the illustrator Nuno Saraiva and is known as Fado Vadio. It walks you through the history of the music in pictures: taverns and guitars, Severa and her count, singers in black, censors, radio, the great names of the twentieth century and the ordinary people who sang for nothing. Try to spot Severa, and see how many fadistas you can recognise by the end.
The church is far older than the paint. There has been a parish church on this spot since the Middle Ages, dedicated to Saint Christopher, the patron of travellers. Its interior, rebuilt and decorated in the seventeenth century, holds paintings that have needed rescue in recent years, and the parish has campaigned to restore them.
Here is a good place to understand what fado actually sounds like. A singer, the fadista, stands in front of usually two musicians: one plays the Portuguese guitar, embroidering melody around the voice, and the other plays the classical guitar, called the viola in Portugal, keeping the rhythm and the bass. Sometimes a bass guitar joins them. There is no drum, no piano, nothing to hide behind. The voice must carry it all.
And when a fado begins in a tavern, someone may call for silence: silêncio, que se vai cantar o fado. The room goes still, the waiters stop moving, and even the tourists understand. Now leave Mouraria, walking south-east and downhill through the lanes towards the cathedral district, about four hundred metres, to an old prison that tells what happened to songs under the dictatorship.