History

Fernando Pessoa moved with his family to the apartment on the first floor (right), at number 16, Rua Coelho da Rocha, Campo de Ourique, in 1920. This was his sixteenth address and he lived here until just a few days before his death on 30 November 1935. This and the building’s other apartments were occupied by all kinds of different tenants in the following years.

At the end of the 1980s, Lisbon Municipal Council purchased the building of number 16, Coelho da Rocha, which was in a very bad state of conservation and in danger of being demolished. The fact that this was the last address of Fernando Pessoa made this a privileged space for storing and exhibiting the writer’s personal effects, which were then in the possession of Lisbon Municipal Council: personal objects, some furniture and a large part of the books that belonged to the writer’s private library.  

Officially inaugurated on 30 November 1993, on the anniversary of the poet’s death, Casa Fernando Pessoa has been open to the public ever since. The whole building was completely reconstructed, in keeping with the design developed by the architect Daniela Ermano, with only the original façade, the stairs leading to the first floor and two rooms of the family’s apartment being left unchanged.

Since its opening, Casa Fernando Pessoa has been equipped with an auditorium, a library and a reconstruction of the writer’s bedroom, responding to its vocation as a house of literature in Lisbon. In 2013, a multimedia room was opened on the third floor.

In 2012, Casa Fernando Pessoa began to be managed by EGEAC, a municipal company, and it is now included in this network of cultural equipment, being the only one that is exclusively dedicated to literature.

The various directors of the Casa Fernando Pessoa have been: Manuela Júdice, Clara Ferreira Alves, Francisco José Viegas and Inês Pedrosa. Since July 2014, the Casa Fernando Pessoa has been run by Clara Riso.