Lisbon's colours by day and night

As we sat on the tram’s wooden benches, looking out at the colourful tiled façades lit up in the March sunshine, a young woman dressed in a cotton print dress and straw hat burst into poem. The carriage fell silent to listen. I could only recognise the odd word, but was fascinated by the sounds and rhythm of the Portuguese language.

The short descent down the steep, narrow street from Lisbon’s Barrio Alto to Praça dos Restauradores allowed time for just three poems to be recited by her and her friends, who sat on the window ledges at each end of the carriage. It was a lovely gesture to mark World Poetry Day (March 21).


This linguistic surprise was one of several highlights during my long weekend in the Portuguese capital. Another was the country’s fado music, which literally means “fate”. It took a while for us to find a fado club we were happy with, finally plumping for a small, basement one in the Alfama district. Most of the audience had clearly made an entire evening of it, dining, drinking and listening. We went in for a nightcap and an hour or so of the beautiful, doleful music.

Two old men played guitars – one a simple, rhythmic line on a Spanish guitar, the other a more intricate part on a 12-string guitarra. To this accompaniment, a voice sang its words of love, sorrow and yearning. A set of about 15 minutes by one singer was followed by a break of a similar length to allow time for chatter and drinks, and then another singer would take to the floor. The three performers stood in the middle of the room, with the low, vaulted brick ceiling above and the audience seated at tables all around.

The minor key, the melancholic voice, the traditional black dress and shawl of the female singer, together they created a sombre, dark mood, far removed from the bright colours of the daytime and yet just as much a part of the Portuguese culture.

Expand those literary horizons!

A note for your literary diary: 26-29 March, Passa Porta Festival, Brussels.

Over the four days, the literary side of Brussels will come to life with debates, discussions and tours by writers from across the globe. Much of the programme is in French and Dutch, but there’s also plenty to choose from in other languages including English. Turkey’s Elif Shafak, Hungary’s Péter Nádas and the UK’s Alan Hollinghurst will be among the authors taking part.

I caught up with Passa Porta’s director, Sigrid Bousset, to learn more about this year’s festival and where the original idea for such a festival came from. You can read my article, published today in Flanders Today, by clicking here.

Museums open until 1am - if you can get in

More than 10,000 people spent last Saturday night visiting a Brussels museum as part of “Museum Night Fever”. The sheer popularity, however, meant that my experience was more traipsing around town from one queue to another rather than actual museum visiting.

Still, I did make it into the Cinquantenaire museum (part of the Royal Museums of Art and History) and discovered its Roman mosaic collection from Apamea in Syria. That in itself made the evening worthwhile. The centrepiece of this wing is a beautiful 5th century floor mosaic depicting hunting scenes. Along one side of the room is an impressive reconstruction of part of Apamea’s colonnaded street, which ran almost 2 kilometres on a north-south axis through the city. The museum’s collection also included mosaics dated from the year 392 from Apamea’s synagogue.

If you were looking for dance classes rather than Roman mosaics, then the place to be was the quirky “Continental Superstar” space, which I visited earlier in the year (click here to read the post). The disco lights were spinning and the bar was open. It still didn’t quite work for me though.

In total, 14 museums opened their doors on Saturday between 7pm and 1am. The Museum of Musical Instruments’ party sounded good and was certainly popular but the organisers told us that we probably wouldn’t get to the front of the queue before it finished.

Next tip: the Robert Capa photography exhibition at the Jewish Museum. Unfortunately the museum decided there were too many visitors that evening and so they were closing the doors early. Luckily though it’s just around the corner from the Sablon area and so we rounded off the evening with a nightcap in a local bar. Not quite the museum extravaganza I had anticipated but it had its highlights all the same.