Reopening Lisbon: Exploring the Gulbenkian Museum

As Portugal has stepped forward into its next phase of “deconfinement,” the many museums and other historical sites in the nation are reopening to visitors again, along with restaurants and cafes welcoming diners for on-site food and drink. A great article in The Portugal News lists many of the openings here in Lisbon, so Sarah and I decided to make the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian our first stop. For those who have followed our expat odyssey so far, you’ll know that art museums and galleries are at the top of our list as we discover new destinations as travelers who had never ventured outside the US until 2016. Our favorites have been the Prado (and the Thyssen and the Reina Sofia) in Madrid, the Picasso Museum in Barcelona and the Dali Museum in Figueres, plus The Louvre Abu Dhabi–we haven’t made it to Paris yet. We also loved the Uffizi in Florence and the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, and last fall we were fortunate to add London’s National Gallery and St. Ives’s own Tate Modern in lovely Cornwall during our sojourn in England. Each of these wonderful venues had a setting and a character of their own that complemented our understanding and appreciation of their works of art.

So, as newcomers to Lisbon and to Portugal, Sarah and I have much to discover and many dishes to sample–and bottles of Vinho Verde and Porto Branco to uncork–and one of our goals is to not only learn about our new surroundings but to also do our tiny part to help out the recovery of businesses and community sites after more than a year of dealing with the virus and the extended ramifications of those necessities. Tough work, some might say.

So, in keeping with our typical strategy of gallery explorations in new cities, we decided to seek out the Gulbenkian for a morning’s delight. Great for us, it’s only 2.2km from our flat and it’s just off the Azul (blue) line of the underground Metro with its station just around the corner from us. We’ve taken the Metro a few times already and loved its simplicity, cleanliness, and ease of use. Plus, with our Viva Viagem Cards, a trip on the Metro is only €1.34 each!

But, as with life in general, sometimes things don’t always seem to go as expected. When Sarah and I escalatored down the five long flights to the level of the Metro in the Baixa, zapped some additional fare monies onto our cards, and then made our way to the platform, we noticed a larger than usual crowd, plus several uniformed Metro workers huddled near the tunnel entrance where a train seemed to be stopped well short of the platform. Not sure what had happened and how long it might take, we realized that our station is a junction of two lines and that we could simply hop on the Verde (green) line, take it a few stops to another junction, transfer to the Vermelho (red) line and arrive at the stop we needed for the Gulbenkian. Wonderful to live in a city with such an extensive and convenient transportation system.

When we climbed up from the Metro in Sao Sebastiao, we came face to face with another of Lisbon’s notable locations, El Corte Ingles, a sizable urban shopping mall with all the expected shops. We bypassed the mall and found our way into the Jardim da Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian, the good sized park surrounding the museum, and quickly fell in love with its tranquil feel and picturesque setting. It turns out that the museum was opened in 1969 and houses the work of a lifetime by the British-Armenian benefactor and collector assembled with a set of about a thousand pieces covering Egyptian Art, Greco-Roman, Mesopotamia, Islamic East, Armenia, Far East and, in the art of the West, Sculpture, Book Art, Painting, 18th century French decorations, and works by René Lalique. (That latter section was under renovation as of our tour.)

We worked our way around to the main entrance and wondered if the museum was really open, as we had passed very few people in the park. Indeed, it was open and we were welcomed, and essentially had the entire place to ourselves as we were passed only by a rapidly moving group of three. The museum itself makes wonderful use of the floor to ceiling windows, masking them with a dark scrim that lets in the view of the surrounding lush gardens yet minimizing any glare, thus working together to highlight, in our view, the works they accompanied. Brilliant! What a treat to wander the exquisite outside inside spaces and explore the marvelous collection of artworks by ourselves.

Of course, a leisurely stroll through several millennia of stunning works of art in a perfect setting brings its own challenge in working up one’s appetite. So, back to Chiado after a quick stop at the Decathlon shop—where we discovered the prices are about the same lows we enjoyed at their stores in India—and a test of another burger on our “best in Lisbon” poll we had posed to one of the Facebook groups here. We stopped in at Honorato Hamburgueres Artesanais just around the corner from our flat and boom, a 4.5 out of 5 and top of the list so far. We’ve only had two of the dozen recommendations so far, but hey!

Next up, the annual celebration of Freedom Day on 25 April—the day of the peaceful Carnation Revolution when the country’s authoritarian dictatorship was ended in 1974—followed later this week by a visit to an intriguing light show of Monet and Klimt arwork at the city’s historic 18th century reservoir. And, of course, our ongoing quests for the best polvo, the best prego, the best cerveja, the best bacalhau a bras . . . you get the picture . . .