Bairro Estrela d'Ouro: A Village of Stars

Why is it significant?

Find the entrance to the little quarter and start counting stars. There is one above the gate, others set into façades and ironwork, even worked into the stone pavement under your feet. Once you notice them, you cannot stop.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Find the entrance to the little quarter and start counting stars. There is one above the gate, others set into façades and ironwork, even worked into the stone pavement under your feet. Once you notice them, you cannot stop.

This is the Bairro Estrela d'Ouro, the Golden Star quarter, built between 1907 and 1909 by Agapito Serra Fernandes, a businessman from Galicia who had made his fortune in Lisbon in the sweets and confectionery trade. The star was his brand, and he stamped it on everything he built, the way a modern company puts its logo on a headquarters.

Walk along the narrow inner streets and you will see neat two-storey terraces, small courtyards and flowerpots on every step. Several of the little streets carry women's first names, said to honour the women of his family. He built his own house here too, among the people who rented from him, which was not how most landlords lived.

Quarters like this one, the vilas and bairros operários, sprang up all over eastern Lisbon around 1900, when factories along the river were drawing workers in from the countryside faster than the city could house them. Some owners built cramped, dark courtyards. A few, like this one, built something with a sense of pride... though always, it should be said, as an investment.

Fernandes had one more dream: on the edge of the quarter, on Rua da Graça, he built a cinema, the Royal Cine, which opened in 1929. Local history remembers it as the first cinema in Portugal to show a film with sound. Imagine the queue outside, and the gasp when the actors on screen opened their mouths and voices came out. Now head back south along Rua da Graça, and turn into Rua do Sol à Graça to find a hidden street of iron balconies.