The Best Museum

On Wednesday, Karen and I packed a picnic lunch and hiked north to the Museu Caloust Gulbenkian, a gallery housing the fabulous collection of an expatriate Turkish oil magnate. The weather was fine for walking, about 15°C, with sun and cloud. It’s a 45-minute walk, along a route mostly new to us, from Graca into Estefana and on up to Saldahna – away from the centre in other words. Once you get into Estefana, Lisbon starts to look markedly different, richer, more middle class, more modern, not as dilapidated and dirty. Graca, where we are, is very much a working- and lower middle-class neighbourhood.

Interesting art deco building in Graca with very raunchy relief carving at top

More Lisbon whole-building wall art in Estefana

The plan was to pick up a drink for me on the way and eat in the lovely park that surrounds the Gulbenkian and its sister museum, the Centro de Arte Moderna, which is also operated by the Gulbenkian Foundation. In the city centre, there are convenience stores and pastry shops and frutarias in every block. Here, not so much. I left Karen in the park and went searching. It was over 20 minutes before I got back, hot and sweaty, but with a cold can of Sagres beer for my trouble. We sat on a stone bench, eating our lunch, listening to the joyful shouts of kindergartners playing in the nearby playground.

Art deco sculpture in the Gulbenkian lobby, by Alfred Auguste Janniot (1889–1969)

The story behind the Gulbenkian is interesting. He was an early 20th century oil baron, a Turkish national of Armenian ancestry, who lived for most of his collecting years in London. When the war came, as a citizen of an enemy nation, he was asked to leave. Gulbenkian made it clear he would bring his wealth and art collection with him wherever he found asylum. A bidding war among nations ensued. Portugal offered tax concessions and dispossessed a marquis to provide a suitably palatial home. In gratitude, Gulbenkian left his collection to the nation when he died in the early 1950s, and much of his wealth. His proviso was that the collection be kept together and displayed to the public. The foundation was formed in 1969.  

Rare Roman gold medallion with picture of Alexander the Great, one of umpteen in the collection - over 2000 years old

The modern gallery buildings are beauties, nestled into the trees in the park, with lots of natural light inside. And the collection is fantastic. This was our kind of museum experience: a relatively few, very well chosen pieces, beautifully displayed, and without the crowds that ruin the experience at bigger, better known – and too often, cluttered – galleries and museums. When the centre of Lisbon is so jammed with tourists, and it is, still, even though Easter is over, why weren’t there more here? The entry price is certainly reasonable enough: 5€, with a discount for us as seniors, bringing it to a piddling 2.50€ – which they very kindly honoured even though I initially purchased regular adult tickets.

Late dynasty gilded silver funerary mask

Chinese vase. Which period? Who knows but it's gorgeous

The collection covers a wide gamut, from Egyptian and ancient Roman, Chinese and Japanese, through middle Eastern – mostly carpets and fabrics that Karen loved – and European art from the 15th to early 20th centuries. Plus impossibly opulent-looking furniture, mostly from the 16th through 18th centuries. It’s a lot of ground to cover, and there is no suggestion that the collection is in any way comprehensive, but it includes some absolutely ravishing pieces. To name a few just from the European art collection: three prime Gainsboroughs, including one huge, full-length portrait, lovely, large-scale portraits by Van Dyck and Rembrandt, a great J.M.W. Turner from the late period.

Portrait of a man, by Van Dyck

Portrait of a young woman by Thomas Gainsborough

Portrait of Mrs Lowndes-Stone by Thomas Gainsborough

Mr. Gulbenkian seemed to have a thing for portraits of beautiful women – as who wouldn’t? I think the mark of a great picture of a woman is that it makes you fall a little in love with her. Take a look at these two. 

Portrait of a young woman by Domenico Ghirlandaio, Florence 1490

Portrait of Mademoiselle Duplant by Francois-Andre Vincent, 1793 

I almost feel I know the girl in the 1490 painting by Domenico Ghirlandaio, or I’ve seen her on the street somewhere, her or one of her look-alike descendants. And the one of the supremely confidant, modern-looking French woman sitting at her spinet. Wouldn’t you like to get to know her? (Note that the painting dates from 1793. The Revolution was raging; they'd guillotined the king the year before. How can she look so calm and collected?)

It was supposed to rain late in the day. We spent over two hours in the museum and then started walking home, with storm clouds brewing overhead. It began to spit just as we got near home. We ducked into a supermercado to buy some dinner, and made it home just in the nick of time. Five minutes after we got in, it was teeming.

The next day was a not very ambitious one. We shopped again in the late morning, had lunch in the apartment, then set out for the Rossio train station to buy tickets for a planned trip out to Cascais the next day. Cascais is a beach and fishing village 40 minutes north of Lisbon. We an get free “rental” bikes there and ride the seaside bike trails. Turns out the train leaves from a different station, so we came away empty-handed. And we decided in the end to delay until next week when the weather will be a bit nicer.

Graca scenes - on the way down the mountain

Rossio Square: wavy paving

We did walk up the hill from Rossio station to the Convent of Carmo, a ruin that houses an archaeological museum (about the convent). It’s at the top of the Elevador de Santa Justa, an actual elevator, not a funicular, built in the late 1800s to get people from Chiado below up to Bairro Alto. We chose not to pay for either the elevador or the archaeological museum, but enjoyed the views out over the city to Graca and Alfama.

View from Carmo convent over Rossio Square to Graca

Elevador de Santa Justa

The walk home was by a long, but more gently rising route. Karen’s poor arthritic joints were bothering her. She had a hot bath in our beautiful bathtub when she got home. We love having the bathtub so much we’ve decided we must get a new one in our apartment at home. The one we have now is unusably uncomfortable. 

Graca - late sun on tile house fronts