Júlio de Matos Hospital

The first plans for the Lisbon Psychiatric Hospital Centre (CHPL) date back to 1913 and were drawn up by Prof. Júlio de Matos, the engineer Luiz de Melo and the architect Leonel Gaia. The actual construction work was to take three more decades to be completed. In 1933 the area to be built was expanded and the architect Carlos Chambers Ramos and engineer Leote Tavares, who were to assist in completing the project, were hired. In 1942 and 1943 the landscaping and street building part of the project were completed, under the guidance of the landscape architect Francisco Caldeira Cabral and the botanist and tree expert Mário de Azevedo Gomes. The architect Raul Lino also made a contribution to the definitive design of the facilities. The hospital was made possible by the bequeathal of the land by António Higino Salgado de Araújo, who having taken an interest in the work of Júlio de Matos during a stay at the Miguel Bombarda Hospital, decided to help set up a modern hospital. At the Júlio de Matos Hospital some of the first pre-frontal lobotomy surgeries under the Nobel Prize-winning Dr. Egas Moniz were carried out. The hospital was a very ambitious project in that it represented a vast improvement in the conditions for the practice of psychiatric medicine in Portugal.