Brotéria

Brotéria – Palace of the Counts of Tomar

In Bairro Alto, next to the Church of São Roque, Brotéria is a house of culture founded by the Portuguese Jesuits, where contemporary urban cultures and the Christian faith meet. It takes its name from the journal founded in 1902 by three Jesuit teachers at the Colégio de São Fiel in honour of the naturalist Félix de Avelar Brotero; born as a natural sciences publication, it also became a cultural review from 1925 and has been published without interruption ever since. Since January 2020 the journal has been part of a project of the Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa that added a cultural centre, housed in the former palace of the Counts of Tomar. The building, whose structure dates from the sixteenth century, belonged to António Bernardo da Costa Cabral, was the seat of the Royal British Club from 1926 to 1966 and the Lisbon Municipal Newspaper Library from 1973 to 2012, before being acquired and restored by the Santa Casa. Today it brings together a gallery, café, bookshop and a research library of some 95,000 books and 65,000 periodicals, open to the public since 1995, moved to this house in 2019 and awarded the Gulbenkian Heritage Prize – Maria Tereza and Vasco Vilalva in 2024. The programme, with free admission, includes talks, seminars, exhibitions and guided tours.

Located at: Brotéria
Address: Rua de São Pedro de Alcântara, 3, 1250-237 Lisboa
Opening hours: Monday to Saturday 10:00-18:00 (closed on Sundays)
Phone: +351 968 720 476
Coordinates: 38.7133723, -9.1437194
Buses: 758, 19B, 22B, 759, 709, 711, 746, 783, 732, 736
Tram: 24E, 28E, 12E
Metro: Restauradores (Blue), Baixa-Chiado (Blue, Green)
Train: Sintra Line, Rossio Station, Cascais Line, Cais do Sodré Station
Boat: Cais do Sodré River Station
Opened: 2020 (6 years)