Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea – Museu do Chiado

Since 1911, the year of its foundation, the museum occupied the area of the Convent of Saint Francis, an ensemble seriously affected by the 1775 earthquake. Located in Chiado, the centre of many salons in the last century, this museum chose the ideal location for the generation of artists and intellectuals whose work it displayed. In 1945, after extensive rehabilitation on its structure and interiors, the museum opens to the public, with an independent entrance via Serpa Pinto Street. After the great fire that affected Chiado in 1988, the fate of the ensemble is reassessed by means of a rehabilitation project offered by the French government, with authorship of French architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte. The project sought to integrate the existing historically relevant spaces by means of a Neomodern language. The architect emphasized planes that are suspended passageways, assumed the autonomy of elements such as the floor itself or the sudden walls that determine considerable verticalities. A highly qualified space, due to the elegant combination of attentive details with an original and economic colour and material palette. The discrete sobriety that characterizes it fully dialogues with the building’s functions.