A Travessa das Mónicas e o Convento das Mónicas, já estabelecimento prisional, por volta de 1900. Fotografia de José Artur Leitão Bárcia (Arquivo Municipal de Lisboa).José Artur Leitão Bárcia, Public domain
São Vicente
Home of Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen lived on the first floor of no. 57 from 1951 until her death in 2004. A home with its doors open to the opposition, with one side facing the river and the other the lane of the Mónicas women’s prison.
On 3 November 1951, Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, her husband, Francisco Sousa Tavares, and the three children they already had came to live on the first floor of no. 57 in this lane. That day, Sophia wrote to her mother: “I’m in Graça! I arrived today.”1 In an interview with José Carlos de Vasconcelos, she said that the garden “was a rubbish dump” when she arrived and that it was Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles who designed it; and that the house had “two sides”, one facing the Travessa das Mónicas, “where there was a prison” — the Mónicas Prison — and the other the river.1
“At Sophia’s house there were always guests. Everything was discussed there”, writes Luís Almeida d'Eça in the Agenda Cultural de Lisboa.2 In 1958, Sophia and her husband supported the campaign of Humberto Delgado, and Francisco Sousa Tavares was dismissed from the civil service.2 The architect Nuno Teotónio Pereira, who met her at the meetings of Catholics against the dictatorship, recalled that “there were meetings at her house” and that she took an active part.3
It was also at Sophia’s house, said the priest and singer Francisco Fanhais, that she and Rui Paz worked out the metre of the “Cantata da Paz” (Cantata of Peace) — “We see, we hear and we read / we cannot ignore” (Vemos, ouvimos e lemos / não podemos ignorar) — the poem she wrote for the São Domingos vigil, over the turn of 1968 into 1969. In a file in the Torre do Tombo archive, the researcher Eloísa Aragão found Sophia’s application to open a publishing house in this home, which the political police had suspended because it regarded her and her business partner as suspects.3 Sophia signed the Manifesto of the 101, against the colonial war and the Church’s support for Salazar, and was among the women who founded the National Commission for Aid to Political Prisoners.43
She died in Lisbon on 2 July 2004, and ten years later her remains were moved to the National Pantheon. Near here, the old Graça viewpoint was named after her in 2009, on the fifth anniversary of her death, with a bust — a replica of a bronze sculpted in the 1950s by António Duarte — and a plaque with the poem “Lisboa” (Lisbon), from Navegações (Navigations). The Agenda Cultural de Lisboa suggests an itinerary through six places in Graça in memory of the poet.25
A 16th-century convent turned into a women’s prison. It was mainly a prison for common crimes, but it took in women political prisoners — and served as a punishment for women of the opposition, such as Isabel Aboim Inglez, sent here by the Plenary Court.
Today: Botequim bar (reopened in 2010 by new owners)
The bar Natália Correia opened in 1971 on Largo da Graça with three friends, and to which she moved the salon she held at home — where, in the words of a NOVA University guide, people discussed “literature, politics and feminism in freedom”.
Today: A Voz do Operário Education and Welfare Society
It was born in 1879 as the newspaper of the tobacco workers and became the largest people’s school in Lisbon. In 1949, the opposition held rallies here for the candidacy of Norton de Matos, with Maria Lamas, Isabel Aboim Inglez and Cesina Bermudes.
In this single-storey house on Rua de São Gens lived Angelina Vidal, a teacher, journalist and republican and socialist propagandist who championed women workers and the education of women. She died here, “almost destitute”, on 1 August 1917.
WomenRepublicLabour
Notes on the sources4
The point on the map: OpenStreetMap only identifies no. 57-D in the same lane; the door of no. 57 is still to be confirmed.
Whether there is any plaque on the façade of no. 57.
The year of the support for Humberto Delgado: 1958 (Agenda Cultural de Lisboa) or 1957 (chronology of the National Library).
The date of the application to open a publishing house in this home, and the Torre do Tombo file in which it is found.
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