Rua do Benformoso
Why is it significant?
Listen first, before you look. On Rua do Benformoso you may hear Bengali, Hindi, Nepali, Mandarin, Portuguese from Guinea-Bissau and from Lisbon, all within a few doorways. Shops sell spices, fabrics and phone cards, and the smell of cardamom drifts out of the groceries.
Key Facts
| Place | Rua do Benformoso |
|---|---|
| Address | Rua do Benformoso, 1100-085 Lisboa, Portugal |
| Geo Coordinates | 38.71820, -9.13520 |
| Part of Walk | Mouraria, Cradle of Fado: From Maria Severa to Amália in Lisbon |
| Generated | Generated |
Listen first, before you look. On Rua do Benformoso you may hear Bengali, Hindi, Nepali, Mandarin, Portuguese from Guinea-Bissau and from Lisbon, all within a few doorways. Shops sell spices, fabrics and phone cards, and the smell of cardamom drifts out of the groceries.
This is one of the oldest streets of Mouraria, and the neighbourhood's name tells you who first lived here. After King Afonso Henriques took Lisbon from the Moors in 1147, the Muslim population that stayed was moved outside the walls, onto this slope below the castle. A royal charter of 1170 gave the free Moors their own quarter, their own magistrates and their own mosque. Mouraria means simply the place of the Moors.
It lasted more than three centuries. In 1496 King Manuel I ordered the Muslims and Jews of Portugal to convert or leave, and the Moorish community disappeared from the record. The name stayed, and so did the role: Mouraria remained the place where newcomers and poor people ended up, sailors, migrants from the countryside, people from the colonies.
And that is why it matters for music. Nobody knows exactly where fado came from, and Lisbon loves to argue about it. One theory points to the lundum and the modinha, songs and dances that came from Brazil, especially after the royal court returned from Rio de Janeiro in 1821. Another points to the sea, to sailors' laments. A romantic theory hears Moorish chant in it, which is beautiful and very hard to prove. What is certain is that by the 1830s and 1840s fado was being sung in the taverns of Mouraria and Alfama, by people very much like the ones on this street today.
A mixed neighbourhood made a mixed music. Keep going south to the end of Rua do Benformoso, where the old houses suddenly give way to a wide open square.